


Believe Me

by Davinahyde



Category: Ringer (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Babies, Deception, Doppelganger, Evil Twins, F/M, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:32:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 44,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3225929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davinahyde/pseuds/Davinahyde





	1. Andrew

Bridget had seen pictures of Siobhan with her husband Andrew, and she knew what her twin sister was like, so she knew exactly the kind of man Andrew Martin was.

The photos had been the very definition of bloodless and fussy, with Siobhan and Andrew stiffly posed next to one another, her in some sleek, emotionless designer gown and him in a suit that made him look like…a suit. He seemed like the kind of businessman whom Bridget had had a lot of experience with in her line of work: he ran his marriage like he ran his companies, with exacting schedules and a low tolerance for mistakes, and he hired outside contractors to handle the dirty, exhausting, messy stuff.

An outside contractor much like Bridget herself.

She had wondered how Siobhan tolerated being married to one of those men, the kind of men who went on business trips and even before they’d checked into their company-paid-for hotel suites had booked a woman through the recommended call girl service.

But Siobhan had always dated that sort of man. When Siobhan was in college and Bridget was “working” sometimes — not often, but sometimes — the two of them spoke on the phone. Siobhan was always dating a guy who was “pre-law, with a definite intention of working on corporate litigation” or who came from “a very good family” (which always meant extremely wealthy, with an expectation of starting off in top management). Whenever Siobhan and one of these prime specimens didn’t work out, it was because their “expectations had diverged.” 

Once, and only once, Siobhan had admitted it was because the guy had left her for a woman who’d put out more than once a week at the scheduled time.

Siobhan had always dated that sort of man, and Bridget had always been hired by that sort of man. Bridget knew perfectly well what her brother-in-law would be like when she met him face-to-face. She knew how to handle him.

And then she met Andrew and discovered exactly how wrong she was.

§

The sound of four-inch-heels clacked on the wooden floors of Siobhan’s co-op as Bridget walked through it. Siobhan’s shoes, Siobhan’s white designer clothes ensemble, Siobhan’s diamond earrings. So far the deception was working. So far, every single person who’d seen her — the housekeeper at Siobhan’s little seaside retreat, the car driver tasked with escorting Siobhan through Manhattan, the doorman of this magnificent Upper East Side co-op building — had greeted her as Mrs. Martin. 

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Bridget was scared and alone and on the run and no one in New York City knew she existed. Of course not: Siobhan wouldn’t want anyone to know that there was anyone who approached her in fabulousness, certainly not a sister who’d tumbled down the staircase of life from high-priced call girl to stripper with a prescription meds problem. Better to be an only child than _that_ , certainly. 

Now Siobhan was gone, vanished, disappeared. Bridget didn’t know where her sister was, but right now Siobhan wasn’t here and Bridget needed to hide. Here. 

When Bridget had guided the boat back to the harbor in the Hamptons, she had thought, _I can hide in plain sight, right here, as Siobhan._ Just for a while. Just for a few days. 

Then the housekeeper had reminded her that the contractors were starting work on the beach house come Monday morning and the house would be nigh uninhabitable for a month. The car driver had shown up, ready to take her back to the Upper East Side. 

Bridget had put her wrap-around sunnies on and gotten in the back of the silver car.

The driver took her to the building and the doorman let her in. The fob on Siobhan’s keyring had unlocked the elevator, taking her directly to her floor. And that apartment! Unbelievable that her own sister actually lived in such a place. The size of it — anywhere, let alone in Manhattan, that was a huge apartment. The living room furniture in white — the only people who could afford to have a living room all in white were the ones who didn’t mind paying for reupholstery when a drop of white wine stained the fabric. Crystal chandeliers and those beautiful, noisy hardwood floors. 

The giant portrait of Siobhan smack at the entrance to the apartment was a little much. Honestly, what had possessed her sister to put such a thing up so prominently? Or to put it up at all, for that matter? 

Siobhan’s life was fabulous. Bridget would only borrow it for a while. Until she was safe. Until both of them were safe.

She went to Siobhan’s closet to see what kind of clothes her sister wore. Everything looked so streamlined and uncomfortable. The sexy ice queen vibe. Bridget ran her hands over the fabrics and looked at the cabinets custom-built to hold Siobhan’s shoe collection, which was organized by color, heel size, and designer. 

She didn’t hear the door to the co-op open until she heard a man’s voice say, “Siobhan! I’m home!” 

She turned, and there was Andrew, home from the airport, wheeling his suitcase behind him. 

Bridget had known a lot of men, known them in all sorts of ways. She gotten pretty good at sizing them up right away. Andrew Martin was no idiot. When businessmen hired Bridget to be their “weekend girlfriend” and complained about the Master of the Universe who was running their company, the kind of man they were describing was Andrew Martin.

Andrew Martin, Master of the Universe. He probably had it on his business cards.

Two things immediately came to Bridget’s mind as Siobhan’s husband walked down the hallway to her: 

1) He wasn’t supposed to be here, in New York, in this apartment. Hadn’t Siobhan said he was going to be on a business trip for a while? That was why the sisters could stay in the Hamptons for a while and no one would bother them? Bridget couldn’t fake being Siobhan in front of her husband! She didn’t want to fake being Siobhan in the most intimate relationship two people could have!

2) My God, that was her sister’s _husband_?

That wasn’t just some guy Siobhan was married to. That wasn’t the bored, stiff number cruncher from the photos. That was a _man_. 

Suddenly Bridget’s plan to impersonate her sister seemed completely inane. There was no way this man wasn’t going to know right away that she wasn’t Siobhan. 

Her entire plan suddenly seemed insane. The second she opened her mouth this Master of the Universe would know he had an impostor in his home and he would have her arrested. 

She either had to throw herself on his mercy right now and try to explain everything — including his wife disappearing in the middle of Napeague Bay when no one else was around and how Bridget had started impersonating her — or she had to go all in on pretending to be her sister.

Asking for mercy meant being sent back to FBI custody in Wyoming. Back to her death. Wasn’t that why she ran? She only needed to be Siobhan for a while. How hard could it be? 

This was Siobhan’s house, Siobhan’s husband, Siobhan’s rightful place in the universe. Bridget just had to act like it.

So she greeted Andrew with a flirtatious “Hi” and kissed him. 

Which was a terrible, terrible mistake. 

Because his lips were soft and ever so inviting.

And also because the look on his face made it clear that he and Siobhan didn’t kiss, _ever_. 

_If I’ve gotten this wrong,_ she thought, _what on Earth am I going to get wrong about their relationship?_


	2. Affairs

Okay, so the kiss with Andrew was weird. It was a bad call on Bridget’s part. She’d had a fifty-fifty chance, and she’d chosen the wrong door. So, Siobhan and Andrew didn’t kiss any more. What the hell, maybe married couples didn’t kiss after so many years of wedded bliss. It wasn’t like you needed to signal your partner you wanted sex, right? You were married, the sex was a given.

There would, of course, have to be sex. Andrew had been away on a business trip for a while — Siobhan had made it sound like he was gone for a while and he traveled all the time.

So while Bridget was nervous about that night, a night she thought she’d be in the co-op by herself, she was prepared. Hell, she was no stranger to sex, she’d miraculously gotten a clean bill of health on her last exam, and it probably wasn’t the first time she’d slept with a married guy. She usually didn’t check clients’ marital status before running their card through her machine. But in her mind, _she_ wasn’t married, so it didn’t count as adultery.

She prepped in Siobhan’s dressing room. An entire room, in a Manhattan apartment, solely for dressing? Oh my _God_ , how much money did her sister have? She put on a satin teddy, dabbed a mere hint of Siobhan’s favorite perfume on (in case Bridget’s body smelled too different), and headed into the bedroom.

Where Andrew, healthy guy in his late thirties, away from home for multiple days, was completely out cold.

Bridget lay awake, listening to his snoring, for what seemed like hours before she finally fell asleep too.

She had always envied her sister, who'd always been so successful and so put together. Now Bridget found herself thinking, _Poor Siobhan_. Her perfect sister in the perfect marriage: not so much.

_Man home business trip + surprise at kissing + no sex = husband totally having an affair._

Well, that might be okay, then: she wouldn’t have to worry about the ethical implications of sleeping with her sister’s husband if all they did was _sleep_ together.

§

In the morning Bridget stared at the pages in her sister’s appointment book, a giant perfect-bound orange leather book with gilded edges. The thick heavyweight pages were covered with Siobhan’s perfect handwriting that still looked like calligraphy.

If anyone ever saw Bridget’s handwriting, they’d perform a citizen’s arrest on the spot accusing her of impersonation.

She slammed the appointment book shut and threw it on the table.

Her sister had a damn busy life for a woman whose sole job it was to look fabulous and shop. Meetings, fittings, personal trainers. And something about a penthouse?

That was easy. She could talk about penthouses. Marble this and mahogany that, right? Bridget could fake it.

Except it turned out Gemma didn’t want to talk about what kind of mitered edges the kitchen counters would have or what kind of venting hood they wanted over the European stove. She wanted to talk about her husband’s infidelity.

Gemma was Siobhan’s best friend and the designer for this crazy, amazing penthouse the Martins were putting together. Though why they’d need a new place when that they had that fabulous Upper East Side mansion in the sky… Rich people could afford to be weird with their money, she guessed. Although Bridget liked the funky look of the exposed brick walls a lot better than the stuffy white plaster of Siobhan’s current place.

They stood on the penthouse terrace and Gemma said, “I think Henry’s having an affair.”

Bridget wanted to tell her, “Oh honey, most of them are.” One of the “perks” of her former profession was hearing what men really thought about their lives, and it wasn’t pretty. But Siobhan wouldn’t be that cynical, no way. Was Siobhan really that blasé about her husband’s infidelity? The look on Gemma’s face as she talked about not being able to stand looking at Henry any more was so disheartening. These women told themselves so many lies in order to tolerate their marriages.

Why did these people suffer this way? Because they were expected to make marry and live happily ever after? Because what people saw on the outside was more important than what was happening inside?

Bridget could see Siobhan with the stiff upper lip, pretending to be the kind of icy English blonde that was nowhere in the Kelly family’s forebears. Maybe Andrew had gotten used to that kind of woman back in Great Britain and had simply looked for the same kind of woman here. The kind of woman who would refuse to see the misery that husbands like hers and Gemma’s were visiting on their marriages daily.

§

At the gala, Bridget looked up at Andrew, whose strong fingers had interlaced with her own as they walked to the bar. If Siobhan really was impervious to Andrew’s charms, the woman was a complete idiot.

His hand, so warm and dry and comfortable, slipped away from hers. “I’ll get us our drinks,” he said.

“Oh!” she said. What would Siobhan drink? Nothing made with spirits. Something delicate. Champagne, maybe? White wine? “I’ll have —“

Andrew narrowed his eyes. “Already ordered, darling. Just going to pick them up.”

White zinfandel for her. She had to grit her teeth the entire time they stood there, talking to a couple that apparently Andrew knew from Wall Street. A couple of times Andrew’s gaze had met Bridget’s while the man had droned on and on about derivatives, and Bridget had smiled. Andrew’s eyes were so intelligent and so flirtatious at the same time. She noticed the Wall Street maven’s wife was checking out Andrew as well, sending unmistakeable signals of availability, and Bridget wanted to tell her, _Nuh uh, honey, you can look but you will not be touching, that is my department tonight._

If Andrew Martin needed to cheat on his wife, he could do it with Bridget as well as he could with anyone else.

When the bell for the second half sounded, Andrew excused them and slid his arm around her waist. He leaned in close, and Bridget half-expected him to suggest they skip the second half and go immediately home. His lips tickled the outside of her ear. “Anything wrong with the wine?” he asked.

Dammit. That was what he wanted?

She hadn’t touched the white zinfandel, of course. Wine had never exactly been her thing, when there were harder and more effective ways of blotting out her consciousness.

“Not a great vintage,” she said.

He nodded and held her close as they returned to their seats. Bridget smiled to herself. She could stand another thirty minutes of this nonsense, provided they went directly back to the apartment afterwards, do not pass Go.

And forty minutes later, she discovered what was really going on.

_Oh God. OhGodOhGodOhGod._

_Andrew_ wasn’t having an affair, _Siobhan_ was.

Well, maybe both of them were, who knew. Apparently everyone in this city said “sophisticated” but they meant “jaded.”

Bridget had been startled by the way Henry had approached her at the gala, with his knowing looks and desire for sex ASAP, thank you very much. Then the full impact of what he was saying hit her and she was stunned. This was Gemma’s husband. And this was Siobhan’s lover.

What was Siobhan _thinking_? Cheating on a man like Andrew with this…this smarmy…this sneaky…this husband of another woman. A father of twins. If everyone in a marriage was okay with playing outside the lines, then _fine_ , but the woman Bridget had talked to that very afternoon was distraught about the breakdown of her marriage. And Gemma had confided in the woman who actually responsible for her distress.

Well, the woman who Gemma thought was the woman who was actually responsible. Even if she didn’t know it.

Forget Gemma and what she did or didn’t know. Siobhan most definitely knew, and this was proof positive that Bridget’s smarter, richer, more successful sister was a complete and total idiot. Honestly, was her sister blind? Was she stupid? Her best friend’s husband?

Tonight was going to be different, Bridget thought. Right up until Andrew shot her down as she attempted to talk to him. Their relationship was not “cool.” They were barely speaking. Bridget had been worried she was going to be found out and thrown out on the street.

Now she had a new worry: that _Siobhan_ was going to be out on her ass, on the street, sooner rather than later. Because whatever had drawn her and Andrew together was gone, gone, gone. Was it Sean’s death? Or maybe something more simplistic, like Andrew had found out about Henry and was biding his time?

Whatever. Disappearing into Siobhan’s life had become much more of a nightmare than Bridget had ever suspected.

“I have no idea who my sister is,” Bridget said.


	3. Olivia Charles

_A baby?_ Siobhan was _pregnant_?

Bridget had a hard time imagining Siobhan being pregnant. Hell, for years she had trouble imagining Siobhan doing the kind of things that got a woman pregnant, if only because she could be icier than the rink they used to skate on as kids.

Andrew was thrilled about the baby (although…with what Bridget had picked up on about his relationship with her sister, when precisely had they done anything that might get her pregnant?), Henry was absolutely sure it was his, and Andrew’s daughter Juliet was completely disgusted.

Item number one on Bridget’s agenda: find out the symptoms of having a miscarriage and pretend to lose the baby immediately. She found herself getting sad at the idea, and then shook it off: _not my marriage, not my lover, not my baby,_ she told herself.

§

_This_ was her husband’s business partner. Oh. My. God.

Olivia Charles stood next to Andrew Martin and gave one of those completely insincere “Hi there, sweetie” smiles used by women who didn’t like other women. She was taller than Bridget, had the kind of straight glossy black hair most women would kill for, and seemed more like a model than a financial whiz. The dramatic contrast of black hair with glowing white skin and bright red lips guaranteed she was going to be the center of attention in a room full of men.

Bridget was as circumspect as she could possibly be as she checked out the British woman standing next to her husband. Olivia’s possessive air of Andrew — his body, his time, his conversation, his _shirtsleeve_ — had Bridget asking herself if this was the woman Andrew was having an affair with.

If he was even having one.

God no, not her.

Gemma was no help. Gemma, with her red hair styled in big fat curls and showing off the kind of curvy body Bridget would never have, not in a million years, sashayed over to where Bridget was nursing her sense of indignation at Andrew having been dragged away by…by…that woman.

“Can’t imagine what it’s like to have my husband work with a woman like that,” Gemma said, oh-so-very-helpfully. “Even if she is a genius.”

“She’s very good for the company,” Bridget said. She tried to make the comment sound off-hand, but it just sounded bitter. How would Siobhan have dealt with Olivia? Siobhan probably didn’t even notice Olivia as a potential rival for Andrew’s affections. Wouldn’t even consider that he’d play around.

Bridget’s twin sister had always been extremely confident around men, or at least knew how to act like it. Bridget had once witnessed Siobhan having a fight with one of her college boyfriends: _Who needs who in this relationship?_ Siobhan had yelled at him. He’d come crawling back to her.

“She’s scary,” Gemma said. “And since when do you think she’s all that and a bag of chips?”

Bridget glanced at Gemma, and within seconds the two women were giggling. “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” she said.

“She thinks having a British accent makes her royalty,” Gemma said.

“Frankly, she looks like a serial killer’s girlfriend,” Bridget replied.

"Oh, that's new, I like that one," Gemma said.

The two women started laughing loudly, which attracted stares from other party guests. Including, Bridget quickly noticed, Andrew and Olivia, across the room.

Gemma reached out to a passing waiter and nabbed two flutes of champagne off his tray. She handed one to Bridget, who took it reluctantly. She held it up to the light: you could tell simply from the size of the bubbles and the delicate gold of the liquid that this was a fabulous champagne. She knew precisely how good it was, though: when the caterers had unpacked the bottles, she’d gasped. The Martins went all out for their party guests.

The cold condensation on the outside chilled her fingers. She reminded herself that she couldn’t try it, not one sip, and she forced herself to think about elephant poop instead of what a truly beautiful champagne would taste like, instead of one of those nasty chemical bubble ones.

“To a fabulous friendship, even if everything else in our lives sucks,” Gemma said.

They toasted. Gemma downed half her glass and said, “Oh, Siobhan, that is fabulous.” She looked at the completely full glass in Bridget’s hand. “Come on, take a sip. It’s bad luck if you don’t.”

“It’s bad luck if I do,” Bridget said.

“Oh, come on. You know when they talk about fetal alcohol syndrome? They’re talking about mothers who are putting liters of the crap in their bodies every day. Not one sip of champagne.”

Bridget leaned close to Gemma and whispered, “If I have any more of this stuff, I’m going to let out a belch so loud these investors will run away.”

Gemma let out another belly-shaking laugh that had guests turning toward them, faces clearly curious as what was going on. “Then that one’s mine, sweetheart,” Gemma said, and she plucked the flute out of Bridget’s fingers.

Bridget could feel her solar plexus relax as the glass moved away from her. She knew that she was an addict, that she couldn’t ever have brain-altering chemicals again. But the desire was so strong.

§

Bridget and Olivia stood together as Andrew walked the last remaining investors to the door of the loft.

“Great strategic move,” Olivia said quietly.

“What is?” Bridget asked.

Olivia’s smile was ferocious in its insincerity. “Getting pregnant.”

Bridget smiled back and felt her own mouth muscles stretching tightly. “Getting pregnant is not a strategy.”

“It is if you need to hold on to your husband,” Olivia said, and then she turned to Andrew, who walked up beside to them.

So, were Olivia and Andrew having an affair?

Or was Olivia just deeply worried that Andrew’s attentions — domestic and romantic — were going to be taken away from their business?

For half a moment, Bridget wished the baby were real, inside of her, and a sign of a what happened when two people decided to create a life together by creating a life together. Instead, she was going to have to deal with the nosiness and bitchiness of her husband's business partner, who clearly didn't want Bridget around.

And why on Earth did everyone in this world of high finance-high risk-high reward have to act like such duplicitous assholes all the time?

§

That night, after the cocktail party, Andrew sat with Bridget as she removed her jewelry. He leaned so close Bridget could feel the warmth of his body through his shirt fabric against her skin. She was sure he was going to kiss her. At least kiss her shoulder, given how close his mouth was to it. “Thank you for being so helpful tonight,” he whispered.

“Of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“It hasn’t been that way very often of late,” he said, and she knew he was referring to the way Siobhan must have been behaving lately.

“Marriages are partnerships, right?” Bridget said. Seemed like they must be, at any rate. Why else would you hitch yourself to someone?

Andrew stared at her for a moment, his gaze moving over every centimeter of her face.

Oh God, she’d just given herself away, right? Was he searching for clues as to who this woman with him was?

The corner of his mouth turned up in a little half-smile and his arm brushed against her as he stood up. A trail of goosebumps raised on her skin. “I’m definitely happy to hear that,” he said. “I have some work to do, all right? Six new investors require a great deal of paperwork and I want to make sure they come on board.”

“All right,” Bridget said, and she watched Andrew walk out of the dressing room.

Olivia might think there was more to their relationship, but Bridget was certain that Andrew believed in concentrating his affections at home.

She only hoped he didn’t mind if it wasn’t his wife he was giving them to.


	4. Siobhan in Paris

In Paris, Siobhan stood at the counter, staring at the nice French man behind the counter, and thought, _What the fuck?_

“I need to withdraw some money,” she said, for a second time, in her flawless, accentless French.

“There is no money in the account,” he said, for a second timeh, in his French that betrayed his lower-class roots and would have gotten him thrown out of her high school, let alone her circle of friends.

“There has to be money in the account,” Siobhan said with as large a smile as she could manage, given how much she wanted to scream. “I’m the only one authorized on it.”

He nodded. “And according to our records, you made a very large withdrawal yesterday.”

“No, I didn’t…” She let her voice trail off.

Oh God. _Oh God_. It had to be Bridget.

She walked away from the counter and thought, _Bridget. It’s always Bridget ruining everything._ And then: _My God, I hate my twin._

Like that was anything new. She had always hated Bridget.

While growing up it was easy enough to tell them apart. Siobhan had always bent over backwards to be kind, cheerful, prompt, well-behaved, hard working, thrifty, helpful, and, if she wasn’t quite a genius-level of smart, then as good of a student as she could be. She did her homework, she learned to cook, and she helped out as much as she could at home and at school.

Bridget, on the other hand… Bridget was everything else.

Never around when it was time to do chores—and Siobhan hated having a messy room, so she always cleaned Bridget’s half. Never did her homework, and she didn’t even try to cheat off of Siobhan’s tests in school — she took her Cs and Ds and Fs and said, “Who cares about this crap, really?” On Friday nights, Bridget always had some party to go to, whereas Siobhan stayed home and made sure their drunkard father made it on to the couch to sleep it off and their mother hadn’t overdosed on whatever sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed this time.

Plus — not that Siobhan really cared — there were always boys around Bridget’s locker. Siobhan could always get to her locker with no problem whatsoever.

“How do you do it?” Siobhan asked one day as they walked home.

“Do what?” Bridget’s backpack swung easily as she sauntered down the street. Of course it did: she had no books in there.

“Get all of the boys interested in you. We look exactly the same. How come you’re the only one they talk to? Are you…” Siobhan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Having sex with them or something?”

Bridget had laughed at her. _Laughed._ “Bonnie, why don’t you try smiling at boys once in a while?” she said. “God, you’re such a dork. Smile at a guy and ask him to go get a Frappucino.” She giggled. “Having sex with them or something?” she said, imitating Siobhan.

Stupid Bridget.

Junior year of high school there was one boy Siobhan liked. His name was Tyler Maxfield. Tyler was not only captain of both the competitive math team and the debate team, he was tall, and he was pretty cute under those glasses. Siobhan had worked on several projects in English Lit and International Relations. He seemed to like her too, asking her to meet with him to do extra credit projects for IR and helping her out with her Algebra II homework, even though that had to be totally cake for him.

For the first time in her life Siobhan started doodling her name with a different last name.

“What do you think of Tyler Maxfield?” Siobhan asked Bridget one night.

“Who?” Bridget asked.

“He does a lot of math and debate — oh, you wouldn’t have those classes.”

“Yeah, sounds like we’re probably on different class schedules.” Bridget picked last year’s yearbook off the bookshelf and flipped through it. “Maxfield…Oh, hey. Kind of geeky but not bad. You like him?”

Siobhan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“First guy you’ve ever mentioned. Well, is he as nerdy as he looks?”

“No, he’s nice. I like talking to him.”

Bridget made a face. “Has he asked you out?”

Siobhan shook her head.

“Hmm. Okay. Does he date at all?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he doesn’t seem gay or anything.”

“How would I know if he’s gay?”

Bridget tilted her head to the side, as if once again to ask her twin, _What, are you a moron?_ She scratched her chin, then snapped her fingers. “You have class with him some days, right?”

Siobhan nodded.

“Ask him if you guys can swing by Starbucks first, get some coffee, work there.”

“We work in the library.”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “You’re not doing this for the coffee, Bonnie. If he’s at all interested in you, he’ll get this is a proto-date and like practice for an actual date, okay?”

The next day, Tyler was home sick and Siobhan tried not to stare at the back of his chair. Tuesday Tyler was back, but their schedules only overlapped at lunch and he was knee-deep in tutoring some sophomore. Wednesday they were in IR class and she leaned over to him.

“Hey, do you have any time to help me with some algebra this afternoon?” she asked.

“After school?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “I have gym class last so I’ll have to shower first. I’ll be ten, fifteen minutes.”

She passed Bridget in the hallway after IR and gave her a thumb’s up. Bridget smiled and returned the hand gesture.

After school, Siobhan waited by the door to the library, practicing what she was going to say. _Um, have you been to that new Starbucks?_ No. _Do you want to get something to drink? There’s only soda in the machines here…_ No, he’d seen her drink soda, plenty of times. _Have you ever tried studying at the Starbucks? Seems like it might be fun._

Well, it sounded stupid, but maybe he’d go for it.

Twenty minutes past the bell he still hadn’t shown up. She checked inside the library — nope. She started walking toward the gym

That’s when she saw Tyler and Bridget, on the bleachers. He hadn’t changed out of his mud-spattered gym clothes, and she was wearing her shortest allowable skirt. She didn’t seem to mind the condition of his clothes, because she was letting him put his muddy hands all over her while sticking his tongue down her throat.

Tyler. Bridget. Tyler and Bridget. Tyler kissing Bridget. No no no no no no…

That night, when Bridget finally made it home ( _the slut_ ) Siobhan refused to talk to her. Refused so much as to look at her. When Bridget asked her for a pencil she simply held her hand out with a pencil, without looking up.

The only thing Bridget said was, “Bonnie, he knew it was me and he did it anyhow. Not such a nice guy.”

Siobhan didn’t respond.

"Siobhan, please, I'm sorry, okay?"

Siobhan turned the page of the book she wasn’t really reading.

The next day, when Tyler stopped by her locker, Siobhan said, “Oh, it’s okay, I got help elsewhere.” Then she smiled. “Looked like you did too.” She slammed the locker door in his face.

Over the next couple of days, she told several of her friends, _strictly confidentially mind you_ , that Bridget had given Tyler that _thing_ she needed medical treatment for.

In the fifteen years since then, Siobhan had gotten much wiser to the ways of men and how to handle them. She married a very rich man while enjoying a lover who was better looking than the husband. And Bridget, poor stupid flirty _poor_ Bridget, had started taking money from men to let them do… _things_ …to her and drugs so she didn’t have to think about it.

What had Bridget told the authorities when the boat had come back to shore without her sister on it? “Uh…sorry…I was in a drugged stupor, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

That had to have gotten her in trouble, right?

But obviously she hadn’t. Somehow she’d found Siobhan’s goddamned bank account and _emptied it_. How?

How on Earth had Bridget not been hauled off to jail already?

What was going on back in New York?


	5. How to seduce your sister's husband

Bridget learned quickly to start her morning rolling: check Siobhan’s orange day planner for standing appointments, make phone calls, plan outfits for lunches and fundraisers and menus for dinners. Her favorite part of the morning, however, had nothing to do with all the window dressing and everything to do with the regular kind of dressing.

Andrew was up early, getting ready for his day. He stood in front of the full-length mirror in their dressing room and adjusted the Windsor knot on his red power tie. Bridget sat on the Roman reclining couch, orange book on her lap. She could watch him prep all day. She’d seen lots of guys put on suits, but Andrew was the first one who had ever made it seem so damn sexy. She had a quick fantasy about walking over there and helping him out of every single piece of clothing he’d just put on, right down to the underwear. No, she’d keep going past that point.

He kept glancing at her in the mirror, at first curious that she was still paying attention and then with longer, more deliberate gazes. “Tonight I’m in Chicago to meet with Franklin Hillier and Norman Nicholson,” he told her. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”

She glanced at the book, then back up at him. He was really a very good looking man. “I have the bimonthly dinner of the St. Catherine’s Benevolence Association,” she said.

He clipped the tie to his shirt. “I hope it’s not as terrible as the last one.”

Bridget thought about the three other charitable dinners she’d been to recently and figured they were probably similar to this St. Catherine’s bunch. “The gossiping’s the worst part,” she said.

Andrew stopped in the middle of shrugging on his suit jacket and turned to face her. “Who are you and what have you done with Siobhan Martin?”

The blood drained from her face and she had that scary feeling in the bottom of her stomach again, the one that said _Fraud_ and _Phony_ and maybe _Murderer_. She had to change the subject, fast. “I kind of enjoyed things like that once, but everyone is so relentlessly nasty to everyone else all the time. I’m sure they knife me in the back as soon as I walk away.”

He nodded and turned back the mirror, checking to make sure everything was in place. “I know the feeling,” he said quietly.

She hoped he was talking about business partners. She suspected he actually meant Siobhan.

Bridget glanced at the book again. She’d started filling in Siobhan’s repeat appointments, so she didn’t mess up the schedule any more than she already had, and she was deeply afraid that one day Andrew was going to see her terrible handwriting in the book and know the secret she was trying to keep. “You and I are always so busy,” she said.

He picked up his overnight bag. “That’s the way you’ve always liked it.”

“That sounds terrible,” she said. “I know something I’d like much, much better.”

“What’s that?”

“To spend my night with you.”

He laughed. “Shiv, we go out all the time.”

“I mean, just the two of us. For dinner. Not an opera diva or ballerina or business associate in sight? Just you…and me.”

He stopped mid-stride and put his bag on the marble top of the jewelry bureau. “Are you asking me on a date, Mrs. Martin?”

Bridget felt the smile spread across her face. “I guess I am, Mr. Martin.”

He walked over to her and tilted her face up. “I would love to have a dinner for only the two of us.” He bent down. “It’s been a long time.”

Then he kissed her. A sweet and easy kiss, a husband to his wife.

Oh, God, that was nice.

Bridget would have freely admitted she’d been kissed a lot in her life, and there were lots of types of kisses. There were punishing kisses, sloppy kisses, and little pecks that were hardly there. This was just enchantment, the simplest way for two adults to communicate affection.

“God, I haven’t seen you blush in years,” he said.

She was pretty sure she hadn’t blushed in years. She didn’t even know she still could. _Bridget Kelly, blusher._ She loved the sound of it.

“You’re doing that to me,” she whispered. She put her hands up to his lapels and pulled him down toward her.

Their mouths met again, only this time she made sure it wasn’t one of those sweet marital kisses or even one of the quick hello-and-goodbye kisses she and Andrew had been giving one another. Her mouth opened against his and within seconds she had twined her arms around his neck to pull him closer to her. His hands grabbed the edge of the couch to brace himself and avoid falling on her. A maneuver that kept their bodies apart.

Which she found stupid and annoying and completely unwanted. She wanted to feel him.

She leaned backwards, pulling his body on top of her, their mouths still joined together.

He pushed himself up to look down at her, his face full of surprise.

“Andrew,” she said.

His hips ground into hers, and she could feel a definite and insistent erection pushing against her. She tilted her hips just enough to indicate her willingness to accommodate him. She moved one hand down to untie her robe — the fewer layers between them the better.

Andrew’s hand pulled down the front of her teddy, exposing one hard and tight nipple to the air. He dragged his mouth away from hers long enough to pay attention to her breasts. She ran her hand through his thick, glossy hair and keep his head stationed right where it was. Then he replaced his mouth with his hand and moved back to kissing her, grinding his hips against her in concert with the way his hand was squeezing her breast.

She moved her hand down to his belt.

He finally raised himself up off her, his eyes glazed over with lust. “I… I have to go.”

She stroked the side of his cheek. “Stay.”  
“What’s come over you?” he whispered.

“I want you _really_ badly.“

He grinned. “If this is effects of pregnancy, we might have to start thinking about how many kids we’re willing to have.”

“Skip your meeting,” she said.

He groaned. “Oh God, I can’t. Believe me, there is nothing I want more right now than…” He was panting, like he’d been running. He pressed his erection against her again and closed his eyes. “It’s been quite a while, Shiv.”

“You have time for a quickie,” she said.

“I think I’m going to need more than that to make up for lost time.”

She put her hand on his chest. “It’d be a start.”

He kissed her again, fiercely. And quickly. And then he stood up and moved away from the couch. “We’re going to have to book a significant amount of time together,” he said.

“I will clear my calendar for whenever you are,” she said.

He picked his bag off the bureau. “We should go to that restaurant.”

“We’re in New York City, Andrew, there are lots of restaurants.”

He laughed. “Where we went on our first date, of course. We both remember how that night turned out.” He smiled to himself as he walked out of the dressing room.

The glow from their kiss faded. Siobhan and Andrew’s first date? Bridget flopped backward on the reclining couch. How could she keep making things harder on herself?

She needed to seduce this man and fast, for her own sanity if nothing else. She’d never felt so desperate to have a guy in all her life, and now she could barely think of anything else.

How could Siobhan have jumped off the boat that day? What on Earth could she possibly have been trying to escape? Yes, her life was filled with annoyances and trivialities, but she had more money than God — the suitcase in the closet filled with money Bridget had taken out of the secret bank account was testimony to that — and there was nothing wrong with Andrew that Bridget had found yet. If anything, he was scarily perfect: gorgeous, successful, attentive, passionate, and faithful.

Siobhan once said she had always envied Bridget’s easy mastery of the male sex.

This time around, Bridget had never envied Siobhan so badly in her entire life.


	6. Henry gets a call

Henry Butler looked across the breakfast table at his wife and his kids and thought, _My life is supposed to be better than this. *_

 _Gemma was trying to get the three-year-old boys to eat their breakfast. Or at least, to eat some portion of it without putting the rest on the floor. She was losing the battle and she was taking it out on_ him* like somehow it was _his_ fault. When she grabbed for one plastic bowl full of Cheerios that threatened to spin out of control she glared across the table at Henry, like he’d been the one to tip it over.

Henry looked at the linoleum on their kitchen floor and thought, Who’d even notice if there was more mess? The kitchen was a mess, the house was a mess, the kids cried all the time, and his wife dressed like the highlight of her day was mopping floors. Which it probably was. She only dressed up for interior decorating clients any more. Never for them. Never for _him_.

“A little help here?” Gemma asked with a tight smile, her voice edged with cut glass.

“I need to go write,” Henry said, and he walked out of the kitchen. He stepped on a Playmobil man and son of a _bitch_ that hurt. He grabbed his laptop off the card table desk he had set up in the living room and stuck it into the backpack he’d been using as a carrying case.

“Henry, come back here!” Gemma yelled.

“Bye Daddy!” the boys yelled. Followed by the sound of a juice glass hitting the floor, and Gemma swearing.

What had possessed him to have children with this woman? What kind of mother swears in front of three year olds? Kids just go and repeat everything they hear anyhow, and everyone was going to think that _he_ was the responsible for them sounding like little sailors. The two of them had argued for years about having kids: Gemma _had_ to be a mother, _had_ to have these kids, wasn’t going to let up until she had the little monsters running around and now look at her, she was swearing around them.

That’s not what it was going to be like with Siobhan. My God, Siobhan was going to be an awesome mother.

Henry couldn’t wait to see what his baby with Siobhan was going to be like. That baby was going to be perfect. Not like the screaming, whiny brats Gemma had made. Gemma spoiled the kids to get them to shut up. Siobhan was going to spoil his child with love.

Once on the sidewalk, Henry pulled out his phone and dialed his beloved. A woman holding a plastic sack of groceries bumped into him; he didn’t even care. He listened to the phone ring, holding his breath.

She picked up on the third ring.

“Sweetheart,” Henry said. “I have to see you.”

“No,” Siobhan said.

No? What did she mean, No? Was Andrew there? Of course he was, probably listening in on every phone call, now that he thought Siobhan was pregnant.

“Please,” he begged. If the fans and critics could hear him now. Famous author Henry Butler begging a woman to give him the time of day. “We have to talk.”

“That’s not a good idea,” she said. “Please stop calling me.”

“I’ll tell him,” Henry yelled.

Silence. Had she hung up on him? He wouldn’t tell. Not really. He’d threatened to do it before. Siobhan knew he wouldn’t do it.

“What do you want?” she said.

He thanked whatever God was watching over him. “I want to see the woman I love.”

He thought he heard her mutter something about Gemma, but that couldn’t be right: no way would Siobhan think he loved Gemma. He was quite clear about that. His only love was her. Fierce and unyielding. Siobhan was the perfect goddess, the sort of woman he thought he could only admire from afar, until that day she drew her fingernail down his chest and said, _Are you staring at me for the same reason I’ve been dreaming about you?_

“Fine,” she said.

“The usual place.”

“No.” Her refusal was sharp and final. “I will meet you at… Cafe Grumpy.”

“Chelsea?”

She went silent again. Well, except for tapping he heard in the background. Was she typing? Siobhan hated using computers. _That’s for grinds like Andrew_ , she’d joke. “Yes,” she said slowly. “The one on West 20th.”

 _Well, of course West 20_ th, that’s where Chelsea is* _, he thought. What the hell? Siobhan knew that. “I can’t wait to see you, sweetheart.”_

§

Henry waited at a table near the back, tapping his foot on the floor. Where was she?

Finally Siobhan swept into the cafe… no. That was wrong. She was gliding, not making eye contact with anyone, her gaze fixed on something no one could see. Which was odd. Siobhan always dominated any space she was in, was the center of attention at all times, could sweep in like the Empress of the Universe, acknowledging the attention she was rightfully due from one and all. That was his Siobhan. But now she was behaving differently. She was still Siobhan, his gorgeous goddess, only now she was untouchable again.

He couldn’t go back to worshiping her from afar. He needed her back.  
Because Siobhan made him a better person. Siobhan lifted him up to Mount Olympus. And now with the baby… It was going to be perfect _._

_He stood up as she approached. “Sweetheart,” he whispered, as he reached for her._

_Siobhan stopped short of the table, unwilling to bridge the last twelve inches that would bring her within touching range. “I have somewhere I need to be soon.” He had never heard that tone from her. Not since they became lovers. “This is the last time I’m going to meet with you, okay? No more phone calls. No more text messages. We’re done. You and I are through.”_

_“You are having my baby,” he said, staring at her flat stomach. “We will never be through.”_

_“There is nothing between us,” Siobhan continued, as though he hadn’t spoken. “I am blacklisting your number on this phone. I will not answer it again when you call.”_

_“I will tell Andrew, I swear to God I will, Shiv.”_

_She looked at him then. He expected she would be angry at his threat, she always was. But she was…scared? Anxious? Worried? She blinked before looking away, and he could swear she was about to cry._

_“You are married to a wonderful woman,” Siobhan said, and now Henry knew for a fact something was very, very wrong, because Siobhan had always laughed at Gemma. “You have a family. Andrew does not deserve this. I am going to work very hard to make things work and that does not include you.”_

_“You and I have made a child, Siobhan.”_

_“You have children. You have two children. You need to be their father.”_

_Was he those brats’ father? Maybe not. He could totally believe Gemma had gone behind his back and gotten knocked up. God, if he weren’t related to those kids, she’d have no hold at all over him, right?_

_On the safe side, he could ask a friend to take a DNA test for him._

_“We made plans to be together,” Henry said._

_“I am not going to have your baby,” Siobhan said._

_She couldn’t mean — He grabbed her wrist. “Don’t you dare!” he yelled._

_A barista carrying a bag of trash toward the back stopped by them. “Everything okay here?” he asked._

_Siobhan pried Henry’s fingers off of her wrist. “Everything’s fine,” she said. “I was just leaving.” She pointed a finger at Henry. “Do not follow me. Stay the hell away.”_

_The barista stayed standing right next to Henry while Siobhan made her exit through the front door, squeezing past a pair of hipsters in fedoras and zoot suits. He wanted to rush after her, but the barista shook his head. “Man, just let her go.”_

_“Mind your own goddamn business.” Henry grabbed his backpack and rushed after Siobhan. Maybe that’s what she wanted? To find out how much he loved her no matter what obstacles she put in his way? He loved her more than his own life, a love like theirs only came around once in a million years, he would do anything for her…_

_As he ran out of the cafe, he saw the back of a woman standing at the counter and thought,_ Wow, nice long black hair, lady.* She kind of reminded him of Olivia, Andrew’s business partner. She was certainly skinny enough to be Olivia’s twin.

Half a block later, Henry stopped running. Siobhan had disappeared. He had forgotten the woman standing at the counter completely.

Distraught — no, _destroyed_ — went to Chelsea Park and sat on a bench, his backpack beside him. Write? There was no way he could write now. His heart was breaking. What could have happened to make Siobhan break up their perfect love. _If only he’d… Or maybe she needed…_

Henry’s phone rang. Maybe it was Siobhan, maybe she’d realized she’d made a mistake… No. The caller ID was some long string of numbers — someone was calling him from overseas. Maybe the universe was trying to distract him from his crushed emotions and it was a foreign publisher offering him a ton of money for his last book.

As soon as he answered he remembered that publishers would call his agent, not him. “Hello?”

“Henry, oh thank God, you’re there,” the woman’s voice said. She sounded familiar. Crazily familiar.

Henry’s heart started beating faster. “Who is this?”

“Listen to me, I need your help,” she said. “Hello? Are you there?”

“Who is this?” he said again, louder this time.

“Who is this? Jesus, Henry, have you already forgotten my voice? This is Siobhan. I’m calling from Paris. It’s expensive.”

His chest tightened up. He was finding it difficult to breathe. “You can’t be in Paris. I just saw you.”

“You just saw me? Oh crap. Listen, Henry, that was _not_ me, okay? I need your help, I need to get back to New York.”

“I saw Siobhan Martin less than ten minutes ago.”

“Okay, fine, you want proof? Here’s proof,” the woman on the phone said. “When I go down on you, you really like it when I use my fingers on you _in other ways_.”

Oh my God. Siobhan was the only woman who’d done that to him. He couldn’t believe she would have even heard of such a maneuver, and the first time she’d done it he’d gone nuts. God knew Gemma wouldn’t even think of doing anything like that. He’d once asked if she’d done that to Andrew. “Not likely. He’d probably think it was _embarrassing_ ,” she’d said, imitating Andrew’s clipped British accent. She liked to make fun of Andrew.

The woman on the phone was Siobhan. And she was in Paris. Not in New York. Whoever he’d just met at Cafe Grumpy… that wasn’t Siobhan.

“I need your help to get back to New York,” Siobhan said. “So let me tell you what it is you’re going to do.”


	7. Crossing the Rubicon

Bridget twirled in front of the bank of mirrors in the dressing room. Three reflections of her twirled as well, like the four of them were having a party. A celebration. She was wearing one of Siobhan’s dresses, white silk with green accents, and the skirt flared out as she twirled. She felt like a prima ballerina.

No, better than that. Because Andrew had kissed her.

She felt like a princess.

The dressing room was officially her favoritest room in the co-op. And the reclining couch over there was definitely her favorite piece of furniture _ever_.

The morning had started badly, with Andrew leaving on a trip, yet again — and it had ended fantastically, with Andrew kissing her back, as much passion flowing from him as she was sure she felt for him.

Admittedly, he probably felt it for a different reason than she did, but she wasn’t going to think about that right now.

And then the late morning had started terribly, with Henry calling her — and it had ended fabulously, with Bridget telling Henry once and for all that they were done, through, over… Not that the two of them had ever been a couple, but whatever.

Andrew: definitely interested.

Henry: dispensed with.

Bridget twirled in front of the mirror. Life was just grand.

The phone rang and for a moment Bridget had a fantasy that it was Andrew calling her from the airport. _I can’t possibly go on this business trip right now, love, I need to spend time with you_ , he’d say. _I’m coming home right now._

And she’d say, _Yes yes yes yes please yes._

She picked up the phone. The caller ID said GEMMA BUTLER.

“Siobhan honey,” Gemma’s no-nonsense voice said. “You had lunch yet?”

“Uh, no,” Bridget said.

“Meet me. Right now. We have to talk.”

§

Gemma told her to come to Sue Sells Sushi on Second. Her friend was already there when Bridget arrived. The Amazonian interior designer was striding up and down the block in front of the restaurant. “I said the butterscotch yellow calf leather!” she yelled. “No, not butter yellow. Butterscotch yellow. They’re both in your book. So help me God, if I find one other person you’ve pulled this bait-and-switch on, I’m posting your name on our website. It’s a private website for decorators, honey, you ain’t invited to join in.” She clicked the phone off.

“Are you okay?” Bridget asked.

Gemma looked at her. “I can’t deal with this penny-ante bullshit, Siobhan.”

“What do you —”

Gemma held up the phone. “Stupid wholesalers. My life is falling apart and they’re playing meaningless games.”

“What happened?”

“I’ve found something terrible, Siobhan. I’m shaky, I’m nauseous…”

“You need food.”

Gemma looked up at the logo of the restaurant. “Who’d have thought raw fish could be comfort food, you know? Is this okay with you? I need this right now.”

“Comfort food, I’m all for that,” Bridget said.

“Right, you take one bite of yours and you’re completely comforted. Okay, I’ll be honest, I need some comfort cocktails.”

“This sounds like an emergency.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

The maitre d’ welcomed the pair immediately and sat them at the end of the sushi bar. “I love how much Mr. Takeda loves you,” Gemma said. “We never have to wait.”

“Your regular order?” the waitress said.

Gemma said, “We’ll start with the saketinis.”

Oh God, not alcohol. What was it with this society, everyone drinking all the time. Bridget held up a hand. “None for me.” She fluttered her hand in front of her stomach. “I’d better not.”

“Right,” Gemma said. “Bring two anyhow, I’ll take them both.”

They kept getting interrupted, by one server bringing them hot tea and ice water, and another server bringing them warm washcloths to clean off their hands. Gemma got another phone call and had to step outside. Someone Bridget had never seen before stopped by their bar stools to invite her to a champagne and caviar get-together. Gemma returned to her seat and told the interloper that they’d be happy to come, yes, now go the hell the away. She dropped on to her bar stool and grabbed one of the saketinis like it was a life preserver.

Bridget noticed how tightly Gemma’s lips were pinched. “Something is clearly up with you.”

“Something is clearly _down_ with me, Shiv,” she said. “You know things have been terrible with Henry.”

Henry. Wow. Was there anyone whose day he wasn’t ruining?

“Well.” Gemma finished the first saketini and pushed the glass side. “He just took ten thousand dollars out of our bank account. Cash.”

“What? When?”

“This morning. An hour ago.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. Then I checked our Visa. He bought a ticket on British Airways. Five thousand dollars. One way, first class.”

“What?” Henry sure as hell hadn’t said anything that morning about Paris. “Are you sure?”

Gemma nodded. “You wanna know what the kicker is?” She sipped the second saketini. “It’s not _from_ New York. It’s _to_ New York. From Paris.” She chewed her lower lip. “We don’t know anyone in Paris, Shiv.”

“What did you do?” Bridget asked.

“I cancelled the ticket.” Gemma’s hand started shaking and she put the glass down on the bar. “I spent the next hour calling our banks and our credit cards and, and, and I called Andrew’s office to put a hold on our accounts. No withdrawals without my approval.”

Bridget dug in her purse for her packet of tissues. “Oh my God, Gemma.”

“You wanna hear the absolute best part? When I called, Henry was in Olivia’s office, demanding to make a complete withdrawal of our funds. Immediate. And complete. Olivia says to me — oh, get this, you’ll like this —”

Bridget hadn’t warmed up to her husband’s business partner any more since the first time they’d met. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“She says, ‘I knew it.’ Just like that. ‘I knew it.’ In that snippy English accent of hers.”

Henry had to have gone to Andrew’s office after she’d left him at Cafe Grumpy. Why on Earth would he be trying to pull all his funds right after she’d told him to get the hell out of her life? Was this how he planned to tell Andrew he’d been having an affair with Siobhan?

And what was with this plane ticket from France? If Henry were running away, he’d be going to France…wouldn’t he? And if all he was doing was trying to help one of their friends, wouldn’t he have said something to his own wife?

Something very bad was happening.

Bridget put her hand on Gemma’s back and rubbed, trying to comfort her friend. “Then what did you do?” she asked.

“Then I texted that asshole and told him not to come home tonight unless he had a really good reason.” The tears started running down Gemma’s face. “He hasn’t bothered to respond. I think it’s over this time, Bridget.”

It was impossible to tell someone that the end of their marriage was “for the best,” even if that’s what Bridget secretly suspected was true in this case. Marriages were hard and complicated at the best of times and human beings were for the most part just doing the best that they could. And what did she know about having a long, healthy marriage?

She just wished Gemma had someone better in her life to work on a marriage with than an asshole like Henry, that was all.

“Things are going to work out,” she said quietly. “It might be hard and hurt like hell before it gets better but I know you, Gemma, things are going to get better.”

§

As they walked back out onto a bright, sunny Manhattan sidewalk, Gemma suddenly asked, “Do you know this is the first time we’ve spent a lunch where we’ve mainly talked about me?”

“What? Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m really not.”

“Tell me I am not that bad of a friend.”

Gemma hugged her. “Thank you for listening to me today, Siobhan. I suddenly feel like things are like they used to be between us. No, you know what? They’re even better. They’re better than they ever have been. I feel closer to you than ever.”

Bridget wondered what she should say to an admission like that. She decided to go with her honest reaction. “I’m thrilled to hear that, Gemma. I really like you.”

The women stood there for a moment, smiling at one another, hands clasped. Then Gemma’s mood shifted dramatically.

“I have to go home and get the twins,” Gemma said. “Oh God, this is just a disaster.”

“Please call me if you need anything,” Bridget told her.

Gemma stared at her for a moment.

“What?” Bridget laughed. “Do I have rice in my hair or something?”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever said anything like that to me,” Gemma said. “It’s like there’s a whole new you.”

“Well, I —”

“One I like a whole lot better than the old you. Is this just pregnancy, turning you into such a good friend?”

“I’m sorry Siobhan’s been such a bad one,” Bridget said.

Gemma’s eyebrows narrowed at her.

Oops. Time to rush over that little error. “Call me,” Bridget said. “Let me know how you’re doing.”

“I will, sweetie.” Gemma kissed her on the cheek and then raised a hand to snag a taxi.

§

Things were coming to a head. Bridget could feel that this little game of hers was coming apart. Something about Henry’s bizarre actions with his and Gemma’s finances, after her meeting with him that morning, told her something was underway, something she didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

Everything was going to come apart.

When she returned to the co-op, she felt as though the coach had turned back into a pumpkin and her Fairy Godmother was nowhere to be found. She was as far from the lightness and happiness she’d felt in the morning as she could be. Now she felt desolate and alone.

Could she just tell Andrew that no, she wasn’t Siobhan, she was Bridget, and he’d been living with a stranger for the past several weeks? How violated would he feel about that? Especially when he found out the kind of person Bridget really was.

Could she tell him that his wife had been having an affair with one of their close friends? Was that even her place to do?

Not to mention the craziness that was descending on Gemma and Henry’s marriage — though Henry had definitely done his part in creating that.

Would Andrew simply be content to see the back of Bridget — or would there be legal consequences?

Maybe she should take the suitcase of money that she’d stashed in the closet — and why had Siobhan made a bank account completely on the QT, anyhow — and just disappear. That would be a lot easier than answering Andrew’s questions.

She walked out of the elevator, her heart feeling as though it were completely encased in lead.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asked.

She turned around and stared at him. He was sitting on one of the armchairs in the living room, facing the elevator doors. He’d been waiting for her, apparently. His suit jacket was thrown over the armrest of the couch, his tie had been loosened.

Oh God, he looked so good. Handsome, intelligent, sophisticated… Siobhan had really married an impressive man, hadn’t she.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Got a phone call,” he said as he stood up.

“You…did?”

He walked over to her, locking his arms around her waist and pulling their bodies together. “Yes. Norm Nicholson called me just after I got to JFK. He and Frank had to rearrange their schedules and were headed down to Miami. So instead of my flying to Chicago, they flew here and we met at the airport Hyatt.”

“So you didn’t…”

He shook his head as he started to grin. “Believe you me, even Queens was too far to go today.” He leaned down and kissed her. “I had a very hard time concentrating on a damn thing anyone said today, including me.”

She felt herself smile back at him. Despite everything that had been going through her mind, she didn’t care: right now she couldn’t think of anywhere she wanted to be, except with him. “I have trouble believing that,” she whispered.

“Believe it,” he said, and he kissed her again.

The little nagging voice in the back of her head reared up. She put her hands on his chest in order to push him away, although all it did was give her a feel for his body. “Andrew, we need to talk.”

“Yes, we do,” he said, nodding. “Later.”

Bridget stared into his eyes. She wasn’t the woman he thought she was. And maybe she was as completely immoral as Siobhan had always thought she was, because at the moment, Bridget Kelly did not give a good goddamn that sleeping with Andrew was quite possibly the worst thing she could do right now.

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him back.


	8. Bridget and Andrew

Bridget had a problem.

In the middle of the most wonderful kiss Bridget had ever had in her life, she realized that kiss was the herald of a possible gigantic disaster.

Most adults, when about to make love with a partner for the first time, are aware that they don’t know what their partner likes and doesn’t like. They know what they like to do and what they like other people to do to them. But as a new couple, two people have to figure out a rhythm unique to the two of them. Making love with a stranger is a difficult process, one that requires patience and understanding and a willingness to trust that this other person is going to like exploring this new relationship. Putting two people together in intimate ways creates new possibilities. No two people make love the same way.

When adults have been in a relationship for a while, their sex life can hit a rut. They have sex the same way every time because that’s how they’ve found it works between them. Familiar sex can be comforting. It can also be boring as hell. You always know exactly what your partner’s going to do, and doing anything strange and different can cause arguments and break-ups, because new always means something’s going on.

Bridget had a problem, because one of the two people here was with a new partner, and one was with someone he’d been together with for years.

She knew how to pretend. She knew how to be whoever the guy she was with wanted her to be.

She didn’t know if she could possibly convince Andrew that she was the woman he’d spent the last seven or eight years of his life with.

Or if she even wanted to try.

She pulled away from him and looked into his eyes. “I’m not the woman you think I am,” Bridget said.

He stared her directly in the eye. “You’re the only woman I want,” he said.

She was going to take that as permission to enjoy herself thoroughly.

Her arms still locked around his neck, she pulled him toward her, moving them both backward until her ass hit the wall. He pressed his body against hers, his hips pinning her against the wall, and pushed one of his legs in between hers, hitting her directly on her core. She groaned and squeezed her legs together against him.  
He pulled her away from the wall, roughly, and his hands started stroking up and down her back. “Where the hell is the zipper on this thing?” he growled.

She had no memory of putting the dress on that morning, couldn’t have explained how to get out of it if her life depended on it (which, given the hurry she was in, it might). The dress was a Pucci original, but all it was to Bridget right now was a big fat cotton annoyance.

Her hands dropped to his belt and simply by feel she undid the fastener and pushed the leather strip out of the belt loops.

Andrew looked down at her then, clearly surprised.

Apparently Siobhan never took the initiative. Bridget checked that off her mental list.

“Do you want me to stop?” she whispered.

“Oh, good God no,” he said. “I like that very much.”

She pulled his belt off of him and then started undoing the buttons of his shirt. When she got to the bottom she pulled the shirt open and ran her hand down his chest.

Andrew said, “No fair.” He turned her around and pushed her up against the wall, effectively trapping her against the cold plaster. _A rock and a very hard place indeed_ , she thought, and then his hand reached under her skirt and stroked her through her panties.

Her hips jerked from the sensation. “Andrew.”

“There it is,” he whispered, and his hand disappeared from between her legs. One of his hands held the fabric of her dress taut and the other unzipped her dress. He pushed the shoulders down her arms and the dress fell in a multicolored puddle on the floor.

He turned her back around and she felt like she was on display for him, standing there in a matching bra and panties in sheer pink silk. He ran his hands down her sides, then up to cup her breasts. He spread his fingers over her soft flesh, pushing it upwards, squeezing them. He unhooked her bra and pulled it off of her.

“My turn,” she whispered, and her hands got busy undoing the button at the top of his dress pants. She felt him throb against her hands as she undid his zipper, and then she roughly pushed down both his trousers and his briefs together, allowing his erection to spring free. She grabbed him with one hand and he kissed her hard, pushing the back of her head against the plaster wall, his tongue in her mouth.

Bridget pushed him away and stared into his eyes, so familiar and yet so feral at the same time, her hand still stroking him firmly. She wanted all of him right this minute, in every possible way.

The grin that spread across her face surprised her. She had no idea why: Happiness? Trying to tease him? Excitement that she was finally making love to this man?

She grabbed him and kissed him as hard as he’d kissed her, her tongue in his mouth. Then she pushed him away again before dropping to her knees in front of him.

To be perfectly honest, blowing a guy was not her favorite sexual activity.

At the moment, however, she was pretty certain she would be happy to spend the rest of her life doing exactly that, if it meant doing it with him.

He braced himself against the wall using one arm, while his other hand ran through her hair, the fingers cupping the back of her head.

She had worked up a rather intense rhythm, her head moving back and forth with her tongue moving in concert with her lips, when he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head backward, tilting her face up to look at him. “We can do that later,” he said. “Right now I want you.”

He pushed her onto her back on the Oriental carpet and with a few forceful pulls he ripped her panties off of her. She barely had time to tilt her pelvis upward before he was inside her, his hips banging against with a need she’d rarely felt from a grown man.

She lifted her feet off the floor and locked them around his waist, to allow him inside her even deeper.

He pounded her so fiercely that she was taken by surprise when the first rolling orgasm hit her. She began shifting her hips in rhythm with him and her orgasm built, to the point where she screamed his name and then bit him on the shoulder, hard.

“Siobhan,” he whispered, and then he thrust against her as he came, hard.

Bridget squeezed her eyes shut and told herself she wanted to cry because she was so happy, not because she knew he was in love with someone else.

§

“I think we may have left our clothes all over the living room,” Andrew said.

Bridget shrugged. “It happens.”

Andrew burst into laughter. “Thank God Juliet’s away this week. She’d be traumatized.”

“She’d be more traumatized by the noises we were making.”

“Or the positions we were using.”

“The positions? The language. I didn’t even know I knew those words.”

Now they were both laughing. Andrew leaned down and started nibbling at her neck. She moved her hand down his side slowly, her fingertips grazing the surface of his skin. When her hand got to his hip, she turned her head far enough so that she could kiss him again.

“Why, Mr. Martin,” she said, “already?”

“I think it’s the company I’m keeping,” he said, and he rolled her on her back before raising his body over hers.

§

The only coherent thought Andrew had, over and over, was: _That was amazing._

And another thought, underneath that: That was the most amazing sex he’d ever had with Siobhan. Possibly the most amazing sex he’d ever had in his entire damned life, but that had definitely been the best with Siobhan.

It was a thought that frightened him. He didn’t want to know why it scared him, so he didn’t want to examine it any more closely than that.

_Jesus Christ, man, when was the last time Siobhan used her mouth on you without expecting a pair of five carat earrings afterward?_

__Something was different. Something was hugely different and wrong and God could strike him down now if Andrew wasn’t happier than he’d been in five years.

He lay awake, listening to Siobhan’s breathing as she slept. He should be asleep — from exhaustion, if nothing else. But he felt more alive than he had in a very long time.

And not because he’d gotten laid for the first time in…well, probably since Siobhan had gotten pregnant.

He lay on his side, next to Siobhan. She was faced away from him, cuddling a pillow. He put his hand on her hip and she jerked suddenly but didn’t awaken. He moved his hand down her stomach, resting over her belly button.

Good God. How far along was she?

He couldn’t remember exactly how his first wife’s body had changed when she was pregnant with Juliet. Of course, he hadn’t paid much attention to her all during that time, working 20 hours a day as he had, and that was how she became his ex-wife. He knew some women didn’t show pregnancy for a while and some had bodies that changed immediately, some gained weight all over while others looked like a stick with a beach ball attached. But wouldn’t a slender woman like Siobhan — and she was much thinner than he remembered her looking — show a little already?

His fingers spread out over her soft skin. Her stomach was completely flat. Maybe even concave. No, _definitely_ concave.

Maybe there was a problem with the pregnancy and that’s what she wanted to talk to him about?

Whatever it was, he’d work on the problem with her. He kissed her shoulder. She smelled a bit of of vanilla, the scent of her favorite body wash. But she also smelled of sweat (his, mainly, from his recent exertions) and cinnamon and even something a little spicier, like nutmeg. How had he never noticed that Siobhan smelled so good before? She smelled like a sweaty snickerdoodle. The idea made him laugh, which he tried his best to stifle.

Siobhan rolled on to her back and looked up at him through sleepy eyes. “Hi,” she whispered. She brought her hand up and caressed his cheek.

He leaned down and kissed her. “Hello, princess.”

She put her arms around his neck and then hitched one of her legs over his. When was the last time Siobhan had wanted sex more than once a week, let alone more than once a night?

For that matter…when was the last time _he’d_ been interested in _her_ that much?

She’d said they needed to talk. Andrew was beginning to accept that he needed the two of them to really talk too.


	9. The morning after

They slept late. Way, way, way too late. Their talk would have to wait, but they had forever to talk.

Andrew raced for the door, briefcase in hand. Bridget followed him, kissed him again as they waited for the elevator. “You sure you have to go?” she asked.

“You’re going to kill me, Siobhan,” he said. “I’m not twenty-five any more.”

“No, you’re not,” she said, grinning. “You’re better.” She touched her lips to his again, and once again got that electric feeling of _Oh my God this is heaven_.

After a minute of kissing Andrew pulled away. “Darling, I still have responsibilities. Can’t remember what they are right now, but I have them, I’m certain of that.”

She traced her fingernail down his cheek. “Must be the loss of blood to your brain.”

He grinned like a naughty schoolboy. She couldn’t imagine being tired of that face.

“Play hooky today.”

“Believe me, I want nothing more right now than to spend the rest of the day making love to you.” He kissed her and then stabbed the elevator button with his forefinger. “But that’s why we have the rest of our lives, right?”

The doors to the elevator opened behind him. He got into the car and pushed one of the buttons inside.

As the doors started to slide shut, Bridget said, “Andrew?”

He put his hand in between the doors, and they slid open again. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

He smiled, his eyes crinkling and the cutest dimple forming in his right cheek. “I love you too,” he said.

Bridget stood staring at the elevator doors, unable to move an inch, her chest feeling like it was being constricted by the world’s tightest vise.

Andrew had said he loved her.

Andrew wasn’t exactly the sort of man who threw words like that around.

She covered her mouth to keep herself from screaming at the top of her lungs, and she was pretty sure she was going to lose it. It wasn’t until her hand touched her face that she realized she was crying.

_He’d said he loved her._

__She had never heard those words before in her entire life. From anyone.

She was going to have to tell him everything, that she wasn’t Siobhan, that they were complete strangers to each other…and yet somehow she knew it was going to be okay. He was going to understand.

Even if he didn’t — _he had to he had to he had to_ — even if he didn’t, nothing that happened from this moment on could take away what had happened between them last night. That was the closest she’d ever been to anyone, ever.

She loved Andrew Martin and it wasn’t conditional on his having promised her anything or having paid her anything or being anyone other than the man he was. Even if she never saw him again, she knew she was absolutely certain about that.

§

She cleaned herself up. Reapplied her makeup. Had to get started with her day.

She wasn’t exactly sure what she needed to do with the rest of her day, other than “Wish Andrew were home.” She’d find something. She could take up knitting maybe. Knitting could use up hours, or so she’d heard.

She took out the giant orange leather day book she’d been using to keep track of her many appointments as Siobhan. Unbelievably, she didn’t have one thing lined up for that day. Good. She could use the time to figure out what she was going to say to Andrew when he came home.

The house phone rang.

Bridget answered it. “Hello?” she sang. She didn’t care who knew how absolutely thrilled she was with her life right now.

“Siobhan?”

 _Oh for the love of —_ What a complete buzzkill on an otherwise beautiful morning. “Henry, leave me alone!” She hung up the phone.

It rang again.

She ignored it, and it stopped.

Then her cell phone started ringing.

HENRY BUTLER said the caller ID.

She clicked the power button, telling the phone to send the caller directly to voicemail.

Several minutes later, when the phone rang again, Bridget practiced the litany of curses she was going to throw Henry’s way. But when she picked up the phone again, the caller ID read GEMMA BUTLER.

“Hi Gemma,” she said.

“Sweetie, you’ve got to come meet me immediately,” Gemma said in her most excited voice. “Christian Louboutin is here.”

Bridget stopped herself from saying _Who?_ She was certain she was supposed to know who that was. “Where?”

“Where? My office. He’s signing a pair of shoes for me. Grab your favorite pair of his shoes and get down here right now. Oh! And do I have a story for you about Henry and the money! Get down here!”

Right. Shoes. They could talk shoes and then Bridget could spring her little surprise on Gemma — _Guess what, Gemma, I’m not really Siobhan Martin!_ — and see how her friend reacted. The information about Siobhan and Henry could wait. Bridget didn’t even want to be the bearer of bad news on that one.

She knew immediately which shoes she wanted to bring with: the ones she was wearing yesterday when she came home to the co-op and Andrew was there and then… Bridget went directly to the box in Siobhan’s shoe closet — where all of the shoes organized by designer, color, and heel height — and picked out the python batik pumps. She stuck the box in a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag and headed out.

On the bottom shelf of the shoe closet was the duffel bag where she’d stuffed the money she’d taken out of that secret bank account a few days after she’d first started impersonating Siobhan. Was it already three months ago? She put the bag on the island in the middle of the closet and stared down at the bundles of cash. She’d actually thought she was going to use that money to run away and hide at some point.

She might still need to, of course. If her talk with Andrew didn’t go well.

What was she going to say? _Um, well, see… Siobhan and I haven’t spoken for years, but I came to see her because, well, things weren’t going really well for me. We were reconnecting, and it was so great seeing her again, you know? She took me out on Napeague Bay in your boat and I guess I kinda passed out from the sun — I wasn’t drinking, I swear! — And when I woke up Siobhan was just gone. Gone. Like she’d never been there. She couldn’t have killed herself, there had to be some other explanation, but I didn’t know what to do. And when I got back to your house in the Hamptons, I was going to say something, but everyone kept calling me “Siobhan” and, well, there are some people I’m trying to stay away from and my life kinda sucked before and being Siobhan for a while just sounded like the best idea…_

Yeah, it didn’t sound very plausible to her.

Maybe she could have a practice run with Gemma this afternoon. See how Gemma responded.

She opened the cushioned ottoman with the interior storage space and dropped the duffel bag in there. Then she dropped the giant orange leather datebook on top of it; she wouldn’t need that today.

When she walked out of the elevator in the lobby, she stopped dead.

Henry was standing in the lobby.

“Leave me alone!” Bridget said. “Do you not get it? Leave me the hell alone!”

“Is he bothering you, Mrs. Martin?” the doorman asked.

“Just talk to me for a minute,” Henry said. “Outside.” He tilted his head toward the doorman. “You don’t want him hearing this.”

They exited the co-op building. A white limo was parked in the No Parking zone at the curb. Bridget tried to walk away from Henry, who was the last person on Earth she wanted to see. “Go away.”

“I just want to say one more thing to you, and then we’ll never speak again,” Henry said.

Bridget faced him, arms folded. “I don’t want to make a scene, Henry, but I will.”

Henry gestured toward the white limo. Bridget glanced over as the door to the limo opened

Siobhan stared back at her.

Bridget’s first thought was: _She’s not dead after all. I’m not a murderer._

Her second thought was: _Oh God, I’m going to lose Andrew._

“Get in,” Henry whispered in her ear. “Or, trust me: we’ll have the mother of all scenes right here, out in public. And you don’t want that.”

Bridget had no choice: she had to get in.

Siobhan shook her head sadly as Bridget sat on the couch opposite her. Henry sat next to her, to prevent Bridget from going anywhere.

Before either sister could say something, however, Henry’s arm grabbed Bridget from behind, pulling her against his body. His other hand came up and held a sweet-smelling rag against Bridget’s nose and mouth. She tried to twist away but he forced the rag into her nostrils. After a single breath she felt her eyelids close and her body go limp.

§

Henry dropped Bridget’s unconscious body into a supine position on the long couch seat.

“I hope I didn’t use too much,” Henry said.

Siobhan shrugged. “No great loss if you did. Get her out of those clothes.” She looked down at the clothes she was wearing, cheap department store-quality crap she’d bought at the Bon Marché on the Left Bank. “These are almost too good for her.” She fished in Bridget’s purse and pulled out her cell phone. There was a message from Andrew on it. “Andrew calling me in the middle of the day? What next, flying monkeys?”

She glanced up to check on Henry’s progress with undressing her sister. Henry was staring at Bridget’s naked chest. “Hey, you’re not here to sample the merchandise, just get her undressed, okay?” She threw the cell phone in her own purse and then looked in the Saks bag Bridget had been carrying. She picked up the brown box with the Christian Louboutin logo on it. “Where does she think she’s going with these?” She dropped the box back into the bag. “Ugh. She probably wore them too. Gross.”


	10. Olivia talks to Andrew

Andrew shook his head and wondered what in the hell had happened to him. He’d said, “I love you too.” Last night really must have been a psychedelic, mind-altering experience. When was the last time he’d told Siobhan he loved her and really meant it? He’d probably said it a thousand times in a completely _pro forma_ way, but this morning he had meant every syllable of it. And he was fairly damn sure she’d meant it when she said she loved him, and he couldn’t even remember the last time she’d so much as mouthed the words.

Oh God, maybe they had a chance after all.

The taxi driver said, “Mr. Martin, you getting out or we taking a tour of the city today?”

Andrew looked at the small bearded man with the greasy Greek fisherman’s cap and then out at the sidewalk.

He realized he was at his office.

He literally had no memory of how he’d gotten there.

He knew he had to have stopped at the corner coffee and bagel shop where he stopped at every morning, because he was carrying the small brown bag with the sesame seed bagel in it (toasted, cream cheese, tomato, cucumber) and the cup of Earl Grey tea they always had for him. But he hadn’t taken a bite of the bagel and the tea bag was still in the cup, which meant it was wildly oversteeped and probably bitter as a day trader at triple witching hour. Somehow he’d gotten a taxi — his usual morning taxi, the man knew where to find him every day, which was good, because Andrew didn’t remember getting in or giving directions.

“Keep the change,” Andrew said, and he handed the man a bill. It was a little more than needed, but Andrew did not care.

The man stared at the money before looking at Andrew again. “I will be outside your bagel shop whenever you need me.”

Once out of the taxi, Andrew dumped the oversteeped and tepid tea in the nearest trash bin. As he walked in the front door of the building the doorman said, “Welcome, Mr. Martin!”

Andrew wondered, _Does everyone know how amazing I feel right now?_ “Good morning to you!” he said.

The doorman looked puzzled for a moment, and then a huge smile burst out across the man’s face.

Andrew greeted the front desk guard with a wave — the man did a double-take in response — and as he waited for the elevator he saw a young woman standing there, wearing a severe, very corporate outfit, her frizzy red hair tied back in a tight bun. She seemed rather young, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, so maybe she wanted to make up for her lack of age with an excessive amount of conservatism. She was holding on to her briefcase with whit knuckles.

“Remember to be grateful they’re taking the opportunity to listen to you, but it’s not life and death,” he said to her. “You’ll be fine.”

She looked at him, clearly wondering who the hell this strange guy was. “Do I know you?” she said.

“I’ve been in the position you are now hundreds of times. Relax, take a deep breath, and smile.”

When he said that, a grin crept across her face.

“That’s it,” he said. “You have a beautiful smile, don’t be afraid to use it.” He smiled back at her, as the doors to the elevator opened.

The young woman pushed the button for floor 12 — Quentin, DeRosa, and Schmidt; oh dear, well, perhaps she could use whatever presentation she was making for them as practice for presentations at other law firms — and smiled and waved at him as she exited the elevator. Andrew smiled to himself for the rest of his elevator ride up to the 35th floor.

Today was the start of something new. He felt great.

The doors opened and Mrs. Daley, the woman who’d worked the front desk for Martin and Charles for the last eight years gave him the same tight, perfunctory smile she’d given him every morning of those eight years. “Your hair looks lovely this morning, Deborah,” Andrew said. “The highlights are very nice. Good color for you, not as brassy as last time.”

She blinked at him as he sped by. In the reflection of the glass doors into the main offices, he could see her touch the side of her hair.

His assistant, Shawna, was typing things on her computer as he walked up. “When you have a moment, a cup of tea, please,” he said.

“Of course, Mr. Martin.” She stood up. “You haven’t had tea in the office in years.”

“Mostly because generally I’ve wanted a slug of Scotch as soon as I got here. But not today.” He pointed into his office. “I’ll be in here.”

“Earl Grey, water just off the boil, steeped for three minutes?”

He gave her a thumb’s up. “An American who knows how to make tea. I love you, Shawna. Don’t ever change.”

His assistant burst out with a giggle, then put down her headset to go to the staff room.

Olivia came charging out of her office. “Thank God, you’re back from Chicago. We need to talk this minute.”

He slapped the top of the counter by Shawna’s desk for emphasis. “Whatever you need, darling Olivia.”

Olivia stopped short, nearly tripping poor Shawna in the process. She glared at him. Apparently she was immune to his aura of happiness and contentment. Pity. “Your meetings in Chicago must have worked out brilliantly.”

He couldn’t stop himself before he grinned. “Never made it to Chicago. Norm and Franklin came to JFK. And yes, it was quite successful.”

“You’re in a good mood.”

“I’m in an amazing mood, Olivia. Probably because I slept at home last night.”

Olivia looked cross. “At home, hm?”

He nodded and tried to look serious. “I’m being a good boy and remembering our rules about not discussing our private lives in the office.”

Olivia crossed her arms and stood staring at him for a moment. “Oh dear God. This is bad. This is very bad.”

Andrew did not make physical contact with Olivia very often. For one thing, they were business partners, and just because Olivia was a woman didn’t mean he should take any more physical liberties with her than he would with a male business partner. For another thing, she was a woman, and contact like that tended to be misinterpreted. But she seemed so upset his instinct was to touch her — lightly — on the arm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”  
She waved him off, appalled. “Not me. _You._ I need to talk to you. It’s important. And it’s very, very bad.”

He had no idea what she could possibly want to talk to him about. “All right.”

“Not here. Not —“ Olivia looked at Shawna’s retreat down the hallway, and then back at her own assistant. “Privately.”

They went into Andrew’s office and Olivia shut the door behind her. Andrew sat on one of the armchairs by the window, as Olivia took the couch. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“It’s about your wife,” she told him. “And Henry Butler.”

 _Siobhan and Henry? What?_ “My wife is none of your concern, Olivia.”

“She is after what I overheard yesterday.”

“Let’s not go through any of this again. You don’t like Siobhan. You’ve never liked Siobhan. You’ve never made any secret of that.”

“No, I haven’t liked her. Because she treated you like crap.” Before Andrew could interrupt, Olivia held up a hand. “Oh no, not before you were married. Before you were married, she was attentive and loving and sexy, and whatever the hell else you needed in a wife. And then you marry her and all of a sudden, what happens? Suddenly she has no time for you and you have the coldest goddamn marriage I’ve ever seen and that’s a neat trick given the parents I’ve got.”

“Yes, you were ever so caring as to tell me you thought she got pregnant as a way of saving our marriage.”

“After yesterday, I’m fairly certain she got pregnant as a way of ensuring easy access to your money for the rest of her life. And I’m also damn sure you’d best do a DNA test on that kid when he arrives.”

 _What in the hell…_ “Get out of my office,” Andrew said, no longer feeling his good mood.

Olivia ignored him. “Yesterday at Cafe Grumpy, Siobhan met Henry Butler. He called her things like ‘Sweetheart’ and talked about how she was having his baby.”

Andrew stood up. “This is not funny.”

“It isn’t meant to be, Andrew. Siobhan, for her part, acted like she couldn’t stand him and told him to fuck off. Well, more or less, not those words exactly. Told him to go home and concentrate on his marriage and leave her alone. But trust me, Henry was very clear that he was talking about _their_ baby and she didn’t deny it. They’ve been having an affair, Andrew, I’m sorry.”

No. There wasn’t a chance. The woman in his arms last night would not have slept with Henry Butler. “Siobhan wouldn’t do that,” he said.

_I’m not the woman you think I am._

_You’re the only woman I want._

__“For God’s sake, Andrew, they were so wrapped up in their little psychodrama in the corner they didn’t even see me standing there.” She raised a perfectly waxed eyebrow and crossed one perfectly sculpted leg over the other. “And I’m hard to overlook.”

If he were going to be fair to Olivia — not that he much felt like it at the moment — he had to say she had a teeny bit of a point about how his marriage to Siobhan had been. She had been the most wonderful creature on Earth right up until the wedding ceremony, and afterward they were living every sitcom cliche known. She didn’t listen to him. She made fun of him when he talked about business. She wanted to spend oodles of money and never wanted to hear criticisms of what she spent it on.

And sex? After they were married, she had headaches almost every night or she wasn’t in the mood. On the rare occasions they did have sex, she wanted the lights off and the positions missionary.

Until six, eight weeks ago? When out of nowhere there was that gleam in her eye again when she looked at him. No, not _again_. Like never before. Siobhan had started looking at him like she couldn’t bear to spend a moment away from him, like he was the most interesting man she’d ever met. He had thought that maybe it was the baby, because some people said that hormonal changes caused all sorts of personality changes too. But he was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t something else.

_I’m not the woman you think I am._

_You’re the only woman I want._

__There was an easy explanation for this. There had to be. There was an answer that he could stomach. A story that wouldn’t make last night, the best goddamn night of his entire marriage, a complete lie.

Andrew stared out the window for what could have been five seconds or five years. Then he turned to Olivia.

“Do you know of a good private investigator?” he asked.

“Oh thank God, I thought you were never going to ask. Yes, I do.” She stood up. “He’s going to be here at ten o’clock.”

Jesus, Olivia could show some cheek. Scheduling something like that without asking him. Well, they'd become partners because they were both smart and didn't wait for permission, so he couldn't say he was surprised. Nevertheless: annoying. "Next time you might want to involve me first."

“I made the appointment ahead of time, Andrew. Because if you aren’t going to find out who you’re married to, I sure as hell am. I’m not losing everything I’ve worked on because some tart decides to carve up your soul with her fingernails.”

Olivia opened the door to the office and stalked away.

Andrew picked up his phone and dialed Siobhan’s number. Her voicemail picked up. “Shiv, love,” he said. “We need to talk. Call me as soon as you get this.”


	11. Juliet finds the bag

Juliet Martin wished her father’s co-op had a front door, because then she could slam it.

You couldn’t slam an elevator door.

Mind you, she had tried.

More than once, even.

Juliet stared at the gigantic portrait of Siobhan that dominated the entrance to the co-op. How narcissistic did you have to be to want to have a picture of yourself up on the wall as art?

That was the problem, Juliet thought. Every single adult in her life was a goddamn nightmare on wheels.

She threw her backpack and it skidded across the waxed, gorgeous, hand-scraped Brazilian cherry dining room floor. She hoped the backpack’s buckle scratched the finish.

Her mother? Her mother was flat-out evil. Her father was a son of a bitch. Thank God they hadn’t procreated more than once or Juliet would have had younger, similar looking versions of herself to hate on. And Siobhan, her stepmother? Was in fact the proverbial wicked stepmother, scheming and malevolent and manipulative. Juliet was pretty sure that Siobhan had broken up her parents’ marriage — she had set her sights on Andrew Martin and hadn’t rested until his ring was on her finger. And boy, she had moved _fast_.

Once, Juliet had walked in on her father and Siobhan having sex. And that right there assured her father a trophy in the winner’s circle in the Asshole Hall of Fame: still having sex at his age, let alone letting his own daughter find out about it.

 _Fabulous_ : now she had _that_ image in her head again. Oh God, what a horrible day this was!

Juliet screamed out loud and stamped her feet on the ground. The noise echoed around the co-op.

And then it suddenly dawned on her what felt strange.

Siobhan didn’t come running out to find out what was wrong.

Okay, that was _weird_.

It used to be that Siobhan ignoring Juliet was normal. So then it became weird when Siobhan paid the least bit of attention to Juliet, right up until it became the New Normal and Juliet had gotten all used to it.

Siobhan had never been an especially doting stepmother. It would be fair to call her _hands off_ , if not _outright hostile_. There were times over the past five years when Juliet had the feeling Siobhan wanted her to move back to Florida and live with her mother instead of with Andrew, a feeling strongly reinforced by an argument she’d once overheard, with Siobhan yelling, _Send Juliet back to Florida, would you!_

Anytime Juliet caused a scene in the co-op, though, it seemed like Siobhan was all up in her tree about it. _Stop yelling all the time!_ Or: _That furniture cost more than your school’s tuition and does this family more good._ And the best one: _You’re causing a scene. Your father is very tired of your tantrums and so am I._

Lately Siobhan hadn’t been so bad though. The past couple of weeks, Siobhan had actually been kind of nice. Was it possible that being pregnant had nicened her up somehow?

Wait. Was “nicened” even a word? Juliet thought maybe she should check with her SAT tutor on that.

Siobhan had been so nice that for a couple of weeks Juliet was sure her stepmom wanted something from her, she just couldn’t figure out what. Like, maybe Siobhan expected her to babysit for free or something when the baby got there. Ugh. But then Siobhan _kept_ being nice and never asked for anything, and Juliet was like, No way can Siobhan hold on to pretending to be nice when she so totally wasn’t.

Unless…she was.

Juliet stomped into her bedroom and slammed the door. Stupid parents! Stupid stepparents! Never staying the same!

Juliet’s phone rang. Savannah again. But wait, this was Savannah Rosenberg, not Savannah del Rosado. Juliet was _so_ tired of SdR, everyone was, it was all drama all the time, never letting anyone else get a word in edgewise.

“Hey Savvy,” Juliet said. “Tell me something good or fake it.”

“We have a four day weekend! My dad said we can have the Hamptons place.”

“Huh.” Well, that wasn’t good. Juliet didn’t like Savvy’s dad, although how do you tell your friend her dad’s a total skeeze who looks at you funny and says stuff he really shouldn’t like, _You sure look nice in those shorts_ or _You ever date older men?_ Juliet liked Savvy tons, but not if it meant being around her dad. No way.

“He’s going to Bermuda with his girlfriend,” Savvy said.

“I’m so in,” Juliet told her immediately.

“I’m going to invite Norine and Sonia too.”

Juliet thought they were okay. “Cool.”

“Okay then,” Savvy said. “Grab a couple of nice outfits, because girlfriends are hitting the clubs. Be here by four, I’m having Hector drive us out there.”

Juliet rifled through her closet and saw she had forty thousand outfits and not one thing to wear.

Maybe she could borrow something from Siobhan’s closet. She and Siobhan weren’t quite the same size — how embarrassing was that, her stepmother was actually skinnier than she was — but sometimes Siobhan had decent stuff and, what the hell, Andrew had paid for it, right? So it kind of belonged to Juliet too.

Of course, she and Siobhan had totally different coloring, so there was nothing Juliet could borrow. Siobhan’s clothes ran the gamut from snow white to pale beige with a short stop at a light grey in between.

She pulled open all of Siobhan’s dresser drawers — nothing.

She opened Siobhan’s ottoman and thought the duffel bag would make a fine weekend case, so she pulled it out.

And wow, if that wasn’t heavy.

Juliet dumped the bag on the floor and unzipped it.

Cash.

 _Lots_ of cash.

Lots and lots of Ben Franklins bundled in wrappers that read $10,000 on the label.

And Siobhan’s seriously annoying orange daybook. Hello, had she heard of PDAs or iPhones? Please. Juliet rifled the pages of the daybook. Weird. God, her stepmother was such a freak.

Plus, all of this money…this was crazy.

Juliet allowed herself to play with the mental image of dumping all of this cash in front of her friends and saying, _We are going to have us some fun this weekend, girls!_

But even though Juliet always looked for an opportunity to stick it to the Man (or at least piss Andrew and Siobhan off), she knew walking off with this much money was trouble. Beyond trouble. There was something wrong about this much cash stored here, like this. Her dad knew tons about money (and the best way to keep it) and Siobhan…

…Had been acting weird, hadn’t she.

Juliet picked up the duffel bag and walked out of Siobhan’s closet.

She went to her room and packed for the weekend as quickly as she could. Her clothes weren’t the best, but maybe they’d be okay — most of them still had the labels on them, so it wasn’t like her friends could accuse her of “wearing the same old thing.” She grabbed the duffel bag and ran to the elevators.

When the doors to the elevator opened, Siobhan walked out, nearly running right into Juliet.

And she _glared_ at Juliet.

So that was that. The nice Siobhan who’d been so thoughtful and caring? She was gone. No more nicened-up Wicked Stepmother. This was flat-out wicked Wicked Stepmother. _Again_. Juliet shook her head. Every single adult in her life was a goddamn nightmare on wheels.

“Watch where you’re going,” Siobhan demanded. She pushed past Juliet into the co-op.

After weeks of Siobhan being fairly pleasant and halfway decent, it seemed the bitch was back. Well, that was just* fine _, Juliet thought_.*

Siobhan pivoted on one of those spiky heels she insisted on walking in everywhere, all the time. “What are you doing with that bag?”

“I’m spending the weekend at Savannah’s.” Luckily, half the girls in her school were named Savannah. And Siobhan wouldn’t check up on her anyhow.

“Is that my bag?” Siobhan asked.

“No,” Juliet said. “My Louis Vuitton just looks a whole bunch like yours.”

“Where are you going with it?”

Not, “Where are you going?” Because that would show concern. No, no: where is that bag going?

“I’m going over to a friend’s for the weekend.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Long weekend. It’s on the school calendar. Feel free to check it out at your leisure.”

Siobhan rolled her eyes. Actually rolled her damn eyes. “I’ll do that.” She tottered off toward her room.

The elevator doors opened. Juliet hefted the duffel bag in her hand and got on. This weekend was going to be _awesome_.

On the walk over to Savvy’s co-op Juliet called her father and left a message: “I’m at Savannah Rosenberg’s house in the Hamptons this weekend. Call me if you need me. Love ya!”

Then she turned off the phone and dropped it in the bag. With the other stuff.


	12. Siobhan returns

The meeting with the private investigator took hardly any time at all. Andrew gave him the preliminaries, which was everything he knew about Siobhan: her birthplace, where she grew up, where she’d gone to college, the names of every friend he could think of.

Then, Andrew had started work. Or had tried to. Had done his damned best at any rate. During his first call of the day, to a long-time client, the client had asked, “Are you all right? Because you sound like hell, Martin.”

All right, he needed to avoid making phone calls. One bad phone call was okay — he’d simply sounded distracted, not incompetent. He couldn’t afford to sound incompetent.

Maybe he would be better served catching up on paperwork. Contracts, forecasts, letters to clients.

He asked Shawna to come in and take dictation on a note recapping the agreement he’d come to with a potential investor: terms, amounts,  
Then he noticed his assistant had a strange look on her face.

“What’s the matter?” Andrew asked.

“I thought there was a minimum investment amount,” she said.

“What did I just say?”

Shawna looked down at her screen. “The investor agrees to put fifteen thousand in the fund —”

“Millions,” Andrew said. “Fifteen millions.”

“Okay,” she said, beginning to type furious again, “that makes way more sense.”

He managed to finish the letter — barely — and then he and Olivia had lunch with one of their oldest clients. By the end of the lunch Olivia was sending him warning glares, telling him to shut the hell up and let her talk.

At three o’clock he saw he’d gotten a phone call, and his immediate reaction was to hope it was from Siobhan. He wanted her to call him and say, “Everything’s fine, let me explain to you why things have been so weird and wonderful these past few months.” Then he saw the call was from Juliet, which thrilled him because Juliet never called him if she wasn’t required to. Then he’d discovered she’d left a message saying she was disappearing for the weekend.

“Go home,” Olivia told him. “The private investigator will have something for us by tomorrow morning.”

“Us?” Andrew said.

“You. Oh, go away, would you?”

He went home.

When he got home, Siobhan was on the phone, yelling at someone. That was something he hadn’t heard for the past two months: yelling.

He hadn’t missed it for a moment.

A chill went down his spine.

“Siobhan?” he said.

She flounced out of the bedroom. “You’re home early,” she said. There was no mistaking her tone of complete and total annoyance. She wasn’t happy to see him.

“Slow day at the office,” he said. “Thought I’d come home, spend some time with my family.”

“God, you’re not in danger of going out of business, are you?” The amount of alarm in her voice at the idea of his not having money was comical. Except a week ago they had discussed how well his business was doing. Which had been in itself unusual: Siobhan hadn’t given a flying fuck about what he did for a living, so long as her Visa bill kept getting paid.

“No, everything’s fine. I thought perhaps we could get ready for our evening.” All the immensely wonderful things they had planned. After years of marriage, the crazy urgency of their passion last night had unlocked so many possibilities. So many requests.

She had to know what he was talking about.

“Are you okay?” Siobhan asked. “You look flushed.”

“Do you have requests for what we do tonight?” he asked.

“I can’t find my appointment book,” Siobhan said, her voice all huffy. “Do we have anything planned?”

Andrew decided to play his hunch, which was growing stronger and more terrible by the moment. “I don’t know,” he said calmly, and he shrugged. “I’d like to do the same thing we did last night.”

Siobhan got a big smile on her face that didn’t reach anywhere near her eyes. “Well, since it’s the usual, do you mind if I go out with some girlfriends? I feel like a girls’ night out. No boys allowed.”

“Whatever you want, darling,” he said.

Andrew watched her walk away from him, toward her closet, and he felt his chest start to collapse from the weight pushing on it.

Whoever the hell that woman was, it wasn’t the woman he’d slept with last night.

She seemed much more like the woman he’d been married to for the past seven years.

And he was damn sure which one he wanted to be with right now.

The discussion with that private investigator couldn't come fast enough.


	13. The private investigator

When Siobhan came home from her evening out, Andrew followed her into the bedroom. “We need to talk,” he said.

She brushed past him without looking at him. “I’m really exhausted now, Andrew.” She threw her purse on the bed and headed into the closet. He started to follow her in but she turned around. “I’m tired and I just want to go to sleep, okay? Would you mind sleeping in the guest room tonight?”

The guest room?

“Why?” Andrew said.

“Because you snore and I need to get eight hours.” She closed the dressing room door in his face.

Just like that, he was back to living on a volcano, ready to erupt at any second.

Only now he knew — or remembered — what it was like to have a semblance of a normal life, and he wanted it back.

He went into his home office to see if he could use his old trick of working a lot to take his mind off everything else when he found an email from the private investigator, Geoff Molyneaux. Molyneaux was a former NYPD detective who’d looked and sounded exactly like a NYPD detective when Andrew had met him.

Molyneaux’s email had asked for a meeting first thing in the morning. Andrew texted him: _As early as possible is fine with me_.

Within thirty seconds Molyneaux had replied: _We can meet now if you want_.

Well, it wasn’t like Andrew was going to sleep any time soon. _Do I want to?_

_In my professional opinion: Oh yeah._

Molyneaux mentioned a bar on Third that Andrew had never heard of, but no surprise there: he didn’t exactly hit bars very often. Even when he was single he never went to bars. Too depressing. The cliché about cops and bars was also fairly depressing.

Given the way he felt at the moment, however, Andrew was certain that he’d find rainbows and puppies depressing.

It turned out that Molyneaux’s bar wasn’t the kind of dive Andrew was expecting: it was a wine bar with brass railings and stained cedar beams in the ceiling and stained glass light fixtures. The investigator sat at a table near the giant poster from the Patti Lupone revival of _Gypsy_. He was drinking a glass of rosé. He was the only one in that section, so the two of them would have a modicum of privacy.

The server was at their table within seconds, and Andrew ordered an Old Fashioned.

“Kind of feeling like something more serious than wine, right?” Molyneaux said.

“I’m meeting a PI at midnight because my life has taken a turn for the bizarre,” Andrew said. “If they served Everclear I would order that.”

“First thing I got is, you’ve never done a preliminary background on your wife,” the investigator said.

“How do you know that?”

“Did you know she has a sister?” The man put a folder on the table and opened it up to a picture of two girls, age about twelve. “An identical twin sister?”

Andrew didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Siobhan had always said she was an only child. When he met Siobhan’s parents, they certainly hadn’t mentioned another daughter. He wondered if all of those pictures on their piano were just of Siobhan or not.

A twin sister. That explained a lot. That explained _everything_. The suddenly about-face in Siobhan’s behavior, the little things like why Siobhan suddenly was so ill at ease with their long-time friends (although, to be honest…they made Andrew ill at ease too, it took Siobhan’s behavior to make him admit it), why she smelled so different. So heavenly.

Well, it didn’t explain how this sister had pretended to be his wife, in his house, in his bed.

“What’s her name?” he asked.

“Bridget. She usually goes by Bridget Kelly.”

Siobhan’s mother’s maiden name. Andrew laughed softly. “Sounds like she just got off the boat from Dublin.” He stirred his Old Fashioned. “So why doesn’t anyone talk about Bridget? Black sheep?”

“Bridget’s the sheep the black sheep won’t be seen with.” Molyneaux gave a quick rundown of Bridget’s sins, and Andrew winced with each one. Sister or not, Bridget was definitely the kind of person Siobhan wouldn’t have a thing to do with. Was this really the kind of woman he’d been living with for the past two months?

Of course it was.

“She’s changed her act, though, hasn’t she,” Andrew said.

“And the A goes to the Englishman, you’re right,” Molyneaux said. “Bridget’s been living in Wyoming for the past year, keeping a real low profile, goes to her meetings twice a week, volunteers at the senior center, is a great employee at the hospital where she works. Everyone loves her. No problems. Extremely reliable. Guess what happens about eight weeks ago?”

Andrew shrugged. He didn’t need to guess. “She disappears.”

“She quits her job, tells her sponsor she’s going to be gone for a while, maybe a couple of months, gives up her apartment. And vanishes like the wind. No one’s heard from her since, right?” Molyneaux flipped to a print-out in his folder. “I checked her email account at the hospital. Seems she got a plane ticket.”

It wasn’t hard to pick out the destination airport codes. “To JFK.”

“Open ended return. Guess who paid for the ticket?”

The Visa number was right there on the sheet. “Me.”

“You’re right again, looks like your wife brought her out here.”

Andrew checked the date again: yes, that would be precisely when things got weird. No, not weird — they’d gotten so much _better_. “Siobhan asks Bridget to come out here and…what? Impersonate her? Why?”

He didn’t really expect Molyneaux to answer. Andrew had tons of questions, all of them for himself. _Why had it taken him so long to notice?_ Well, that question was easy: because he and Siobhan had been more roommates than a married couple for a very long time. Here was a harder, more important one: _Why had the arrangement suddenly ended?_ His life with Bridget was proceeding along fine… _no, better than fine_ … And Siobhan reappears. Had Bridget called Siobhan and told her that things were getting weird between them?

Molyneaux made a face, then finished his rosé. “I got no clue what these women were up to. You tell me.”

 _A woman I’ve never met made me fall in love with her and now she’s gone._ “Do you at least know where Siobhan went while she was gone?”

“I got some feelers out.”

Andrew closed the folder and pulled it over to his side of the table. “Well. If it helps any, she’s back now. Siobhan is back at home and Bridget is gone and I have no fucking clue as to what their game is. And goddamn it, I want to know.”

“Can I give you some free advice?” the ex-detective said. “I know, I know: free advice is worth what you paid for it, right? Don’t say anything. I’ve been involved in lots of disappearances where the wife just wanted some time off. I’ve never seen something like this. There’s something hinky going on here.”

“What sort of, uh, ‘hinky’?”Andrew asked.

“I’ll have something for you by nine a.m.,” Molyneaux told him.

Andrew looked at his watch. It was one in the morning.

“Yeah, I’m an insomniac. Also, it’s mostly searches on the web, you know? I can do that from my couch. But I’m waiting to get some phone records.”

“Nine a.m.” Andrew finished his drink and slammed the glass on the counter. He took out a twenty dollar bill and threw it on the table.

§

At seven a.m., Andrew was awakened from his spot on the couch in his home office by the sound of a text on his phone. It was from Molyneaux. _Call me ASAP._

 __He called the investigator, who said, “I got some bad news for you. You want this over the phone?”

“Is it worse than finding out another woman has been living with me, pretending to be my wife?” Andrew said.

“A little, yeah.”

Andrew thought about it. “Is it that my wife was having an affair with her best friend’s husband?”

“You knew about that?” Molyneaux said. “God, you Upper East Siders.”

“No, I didn’t know,” Andrew said. “Olivia Charles — my business partner — guessed. She’s right, though?”

The investigator confirmed Olivia’s suspicions: Siobhan and Henry had indeed been having a longstanding affair. Henry had a standing room at a hotel every week. Until he didn’t, any more.

“One guess as to when that stopped,” Molyneaux said.

Andrew was stunned to discover he didn’t know how that information made him feel. At the very least, Bridget didn’t feel the need to pretend to be Siobhan with everyone.

“So I’m checking this Henry Butler character out,” Molyneaux said. “Chances are he knows what was up with your wife during her little disappearance. I know that his wife has kicked him out of their house.”

Andrew dressed quickly — Siobhan was still in bed. She lay there, looking so beautiful — although her face was fuller than it had been. Than Bridget’s had been, he corrected himself. Still, it was the face of a woman he’d loved enough to marry and become crazy about again over the past few weeks. Maybe he was wrong, maybe this whole thing was in his mind.

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

She scrunched up her face and turned away from him, grumbling.

His wife, his beautiful wife, had done a runner for two months and he hadn’t missed her for a moment. She’d come back and all he wanted to know was where her sister was. He kissed her — a woman he had a perfect right to kiss — and she made it clear she didn’t want him. He didn’t feel rejected at all. Because she didn’t smell right. Her skin didn’t taste right. He wanted her gone.

He wanted Bridget back.

All he wanted to know was _why_. Why they had done this.

What the hell, Andrew thought. If he could handle investors pulling millions from his funds with equilibrium, he could handle this. He shook Siobhan awake, turning her back over. Her eyes flew open. She glared at him.

“Wakey wakey,” he said.

She closed her eyes again. “Leave me alone.”  
She started to turn away from him again, but his hand shot out to stop her from moving.

“Good morning, Siobhan,” he said with a smile. “It is Siobhan this time, right? Not Bridget?”

Siobhan’s eyes widened.

“Yes. I know I’ve been sleeping with your sister for the last two months.” He smiled and decided to be mean. “Trust me. That she wasn’t you was obvious the very first night.”

Siobhan sat up in the bed and lashed her hand out at his face.

He grabbed it before the slap landed. “Don’t,” he said. “Where is Bridget now, by the way?”

Siobhan smiled. “Don’t worry about her, honey. She’s taken her money and gone.” She yawned. “Oh, it feels good not to have to pretend.”

“Pretend what?”

Siobhan just laughed.

“What was this all about, by the way? Why did she come here and pretend to be you?”

“Trust me, more wives would do it if they could.” She smirked. “If they had a sister desperate enough to go along with it.”

Andrew made a comically serious face, with an exaggerated frown. “Well, if marriage is such a hardship for you, you don’t need to suffer it any more.”

Her reaction was immediate: the only way to describe it was _fury_. The waves of anger and aggression rolling off of her caused the air around them to shimmer. “What are you saying?”

“You want a vacation from being married? You can have a permanent vacation from being married. I’m filing for divorce today.”

Siobhan lay back on the oceans of pillows by the headboard. “Oh no,” she said. “I didn’t come back for this.”

“I have been wondering… What was this all about? Why did you leave? And why did you come back? Bridget was doing just fine here, by the way.”

Her lips formed tiny little cat smile, but a smile nonetheless. “You’re not getting a divorce unless I say so.”

“Are you familiar with how divorce works, Shiv?” Andrew asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

“You’ve heard of no-fault divorce, I assume? Everyone signs some papers, the divorce is granted?” He waited for his wife to nod. “Are you aware that New York still has fault divorce?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that in cases of spousal cruelty or adultery, one person can be determined as being at fault.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m fairly certain abandoning your marriage can be considered a fault.” Then he patted her stomach — which was rounder than Bridget’s. This woman was definitely pregnant. “And adultery is definitely on the list.”

She flung his hand off of her. “What do you mean? This is —”

“I have heard of DNA tests, love. Get with the program. And apparently there’s evidence a mile wide you’ve been sleeping with Henry Butler.”

“That you never noticed.”

“Yes. I’m quite the sap, assuming my wife would be faithful to me. I’m told even Bridget had enough sense not to go down that road.”

That made Siobhan laugh. A loud, cutting laugh. Andrew felt a shiver go down his spine.  
She poked him in the chest with her index finger. “You have a tell, Andrew. You’re giving away your secrets. You keep mentioning Bridget. You want to know where she is. You keep thinking about her. You’re threatening a divorce that would destroy you in this city and in your business? Well, guess what, Andrew? Guess what it’s going to cost you to find out where she is and keep your entire life intact?”

Andrew had no idea how to respond. He didn’t care that much. He didn’t.

“The only way I’m giving you a divorce is if you give me everything. This apartment. The new place. All of our assets. Everything.” She patted her stomach. “And say hello to the new child you’re going to transfer all of Juliet’s trusts to.”


	14. Henry takes Bridget to Connecticut</h2>

For a fraction of a second, Henry wondered if he was doing the right thing.

Siobhan was back. The Siobhan who gave him the time of day, not the other one, not the phony one who told him to do stupid things like go home to his wife. The Siobhan who returned all of his affections. Well…maybe not all. He knew he was a little effusive in showing how much she meant to him. When he’d picked her up at JFK after her flight from Paris, he thought he might die from how much he’d missed her.

She kissed him on the cheek. Okay, being honest here, that was surprising. More than just a little surprising, either. He’d expected she’d be nearly as excited to see him, given that he’d just bought her a first-class ticket from Paris with one day’s notice and she hadn’t even said thanks. Was a real kiss too much to ask for?

He’d gotten her bags on the luggage cart and drove her back into the city.

“Where were you?” he said.

“I needed to get away,” Siobhan said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked her. “I would have gone with you. I could have …”

“I just needed some time off,” she said.

“But —”

“Would you stop already?” she yelled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He had a million questions and she didn’t want to answer any of them. What was her sister doing there, pretending to be her? What was her plan, now that she was back? Why had she come back? And dammit, were they going to make love now? It had been a couple of months since the last time Henry had had sex, and he was getting a little testy on the subject.

They went to the hotel. Siobhan’s body had changed — while it made Henry proud to know that they had made a child together, the small roundness of her abdomen looked so strange on her frame. Okay, it looked horrible: she was going to get big and round and fat like Gemma had, then have trouble losing the weight, and then whine at him that it was so hard to lose baby weight and now he didn’t love her any more. Of course he didn’t love her any more! She was a big fat cow who cared about those brats more than she cared about him!

Well. Probably Siobhan wouldn’t be like that. Siobhan, he was pretty certain, would want nannies for the baby. And she’d lose the weight like _that_ , because he couldn’t see Siobhan finding being fat acceptable.

Henry’s joy at seeing Siobhan again dimmed a second time because of what happened during sex. More specifically, when Henry lowered his body down on her, the pressure on her abdomen made Siobhan nauseated, and she threw up all over the bed. Which kind of killed the mood. Almost killed Henry’s desire to have sex ever again, let alone with her.

But a few hours (and one major housekeeping cleanup) later, Siobhan had a plan. The first thing they had to do was get rid of Bridget and get Siobhan back in the co-op. Because she had no money (most of the money she had stashed away had miraculously disappeared, and she was having trouble getting to the rest of it), and it turned out Gemma had turned off the tap to Henry’s money as well.

Henry bought the chloroform. “Why do I have to do it?” he asked.

“Look at that shop! It’s tiny. I’m sure it’s full of chemicals. The chemical smells in there might endanger the baby,” she said.

While Henry rented them a limo, Siobhan made phone calls to arrange things. He didn’t get to hear any of the specifics, but that probably wasn’t important. He did ask her why his name had to go on the limo reservation, and Siobhan pointed out that Bridget had all of her ID documents, so she couldn’t very well do it, could she? Then they went to the co-op to get Siobhan’s sister.

Once they had gotten Bridget and she was out like a light, Siobhan told Henry to get the clothes off of her and put the ones on that Siobhan had given him. “Why?” he said.

“Do it, okay?”

“I want to know what’s going on,” he said.

“Oh, Henry,” Siobhan said. “You’re just not that good with the details, and I am.”

Then she told him what she wanted him to do with her sister.

“I think that isn’t legal,” Henry said.

“Oh, Henry,” Siobhan said, with that smile she sometimes had. She rubbed his leg, her hand sometimes dipping down between his thighs, but never coming any closer to his crotch, the way he badly wanted it to. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Siobhan, if I had someone doing this in a book, he’d be set up as a murderer and go to Rikers Island.”

“My big dramatic writer,” she said, and her hand scooted right to where he wanted it. As her hand worked up and down, she whispered in his ear about how much his help meant to her.  
“What are you going to be doing?” he asked.

“I’m going to see about getting us some money, so we can get away.”

So Henry ended up in a rental car, with Bridget passed out on the passenger seat beside him, as he drove 2 hours to the small town in Connecticut Siobhan told him to go to.When she started to stir, he put some more of the clear liquid on a rag and put it over her nose and mouth again. He wondered if it was messing her brain up any.  
He followed the directions Siobhan had given him to a place in the town. The instructions were simple: leave Bridget outside the building at 150 Elder Montague Drive. Don’t ring the doorbell, don’t do anything, just leave her and turn right around and drive back to New York City.

When Henry saw what 150 Elder Montague Drive looked like, he thought maybe this wasn’t a good plan. He must have made a wrong turn somewhere, though, because it looked like Siobhan was sending him into Crack Central. Did they even allow crack in Connecticut? Didn’t seem like a drug people there would cotton to, but if there were Connecticut residents who liked crack, they all lived here, on this block.

Siobhan seemed certain these people would know what to do with Bridget, though.

So Henry left her on the front doorstep, got back in his car, and headed back to Manhattan.


	15. Bridget wakes up

Her mouth had cotton in it. For a moment or two or maybe it was three or four days, her tongue poked around her mouth and found the skin there was so dry she was sure that it had actual cotton in it. Maybe her mouth was full of cotton wads, stuffed in there to staunch bleeding. Maybe something cotton to shut her the hell up. Had she been screaming? She couldn’t remember much of anything.

She fell asleep again.

§

She woke up and the cotton was still there. Her eyes had been glued shut too, which seemed crazy. Why would someone do that?

“She’s waking up,” said a voice. Somewhere behind her. Maybe it was behind her. Maybe it was to the side. She couldn’t tell. Was she lying down?

She had to get her eyes open. They were so… _stuck_. She pulled as hard as she could — she had to admit, that wasn’t very hard, but she really concentrated on opening her eyelids — but they stubbornly stayed closed. And her tongue was stuck in her mouth.

She felt like she was going to be sick. If she had the energy to throw up, she would.

Her right cheek was pressed into a block of ice. The right side of her face was sore from being on something hard and cold, and she had a headache. Maybe from the cold.

She tried to scream. All that came out was, “Nnnnn.” She tried again. This time there was less noise.

“Get her some water,” somebody said. Same person as before? A different somebody? She couldn’t even remember now what the first person sounded like. Or the second. Were they men or women? Old? She didn’t know them, she was sure of that.

Well, mostly sure of that, at any rate

§

Someone was putting a warm, wet washcloth on her face. It felt so good. The scratchy loops of the cloth touched her eyes, and the sticky stuff keeping her eyes glued shut seemed to loosen a little. She opened her eyes.

The world was so _bright_. She shut them again.

“Help,” she said quietly.

“Lay still,” said a voice. “You gonna be sick again?”

“Help me,” she said again.

“Here’s some water.”

A hand dug under her head and lifted her up. The sudden motion made her feel queasy.”

“There’s a straw there. Drink.”

She opened her eyes enough to see the white bendy straw in front of her. She drank. The water was lukewarm. It was perfect.

“We have got to get her out of here,” said another voice. This voice was deeper, came from somewhere behind her and to the left.

The hand supporting her head gently lay her back down. She had a pillow under her head this time. The other hand, holding the cup with the straw, briefly flashed in front of her as the cup was set down on a nearby table. She looked upward to see who was holding it. Who had been holding her. He was a young guy, dark hair. Looked like someone she’d once seen on _Dancing with the Stars_. Or maybe it was _So You Think You Can Dance_. Maybe she was making it up and he didn’t look like anybody.

The young guy glared at someone she couldn’t see, and then he looked her. “You’re awake, that’s good,” he said. He put the palm of one hand on her forehead. With the other hand he held up three fingers. “How many fingers?”

“Three,” she whispered.

“Oh man,” said the mystery voice. “We have got to get her out of here _now_.”

The young guy let go of her forehead. He was crouched down, she noticed. What was she lying on? It wasn’t hard and cold any more.

“Do it and let’s get her out of here.”

The young guy muttered a couple of things. “You know what it’s going to do, right?”

“You want your tuition for next quarter?” asked the mystery voice.

The young guy unwrapped a plastic bag and took out…something plastic and white. And pointy.

“How nice, you brought something new.”

The young guy looked at the guy she couldn’t see. “Dude, seriously?” He lifted the plastic white pointy thing, and she could see it was syringe. “Tie her up.”

She felt her arm being lifted and she tried to say, “No,” but they didn’t pay attention. Rubber tubing was tied around her upper arm, tight, so tight it hurt, and the young guy took her arm.

“Sorry,” he said. He pushed the plunger.

§

“Wake up,” said a voice. Definitely a new voice. Middle-aged, female, harsh. She was certain she hadn’t heard this one before.

Her eyelids fluttered a little and she opened her eyes to see a nurse. Or one of those nurse practitioners. Green scrubs, hair pulled back in a black and white bun, holding a clipboard. Maybe Filipino?

No, that was wrong. She’d worked with a Filipina woman once. At a restaurant in Butte. This woman had different features. Maybe Polynesian.

She couldn’t remember the Filipina woman’s name. She couldn’t remember her own name. But she knew she was in a bed now, with a pillow behind her head.

“How you feeling?” asked the nurse.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re in the detox ward,” said the nurse. “Congratulations, they got to you in time.”

It didn’t feel like it was in time. She had that crawling feeling all over her body. The horrible itchy feeling that meant she was coming down from something and her body hated her for it and pretty soon it was going to be asking for more. Her heart was beating fast and she wanted to cry because she’d been doing so good, dammit! She had no memory of doing good or what good was but the phrase “A year straight” kept rattling around her brain. She’d been doing good for a year and then she’d fallen off the wagon? Was that right? She was using again?

What had she been using? And where was she?

“Who am I?” she asked.

“Oh, honey,” the nurse said. “The cops are eager to know that too.”


	16. Siobhan schemes

Three months of this? Siobhan asked herself. Yeah. She would have Andrew good and ready to hand her whatever she wanted in a divorce after three months.

Originally, this wasn’t supposed to be hard. There wasn’t even supposed to be a divorce, dammit.

The plan was simple. The key to a good plan was to keep it simple, and Siobhan had done that. Siobhan’s special talent was planning, as it had turned out. It had gotten her a college degree with high grades, it had gotten her a kickass career on Wall Street, and it had gotten her an uber-wealthy husband (who bored the crap out of her, but she didn’t really care about that anyhow).

After a few years of this, however, Siobhan had simply needed to get out: of her stupid marriage to Andrew ( _I mean, ugh, you know?_ ), out of her ridiculous affair with Henry ( _Mr. Needy McNeedy himself_ ), out out of New York City, out of everything. And her only price for getting out of all of the hell was she wanted terrific quantities of money in order to live like a Queen without all these dumbass men around.

The plan had been foolproof. Except it took one damn _fool_ to mess everything up.

First, Siobhan had needed Bridget. Not only because Siobhan’s dish of revenge had been waiting years to be served, but because no one remotely connected with Siobhan’s new life in New York City even knew Bridget existed. Wouldn’t they get a major surprise!

The only people who knew Bridget existed were, of course, her own parents. Siobhan had cut Bridget out of her personal history the second she went to college and she hadn’t seen any need to bring her back in since then. Except for her parents. So Siobhan had sweetly introduced her parents into the luxurious lifestyle Andrew made possible, with trips on cruises (not the best cruises, of course, like they’d know the difference) and tickets to Broadway shows and huge boxes of choice cuts of meats from famous butchers that her parents hadn’t even heard of.

Then she threatened them that if they ever mentioned Bridget to Andrew, she would cut them off without another word.

All of the pictures of Bridget in her parents’s house either disappeared, or they suddenly became pictures of Siobhan.

Parents offered such a wonderful support system for their children, didn’t they?

An investigator Siobhan had hired to find Bridget’s weak spots reported back that her sister was relatively poor, was struggling to keep clean, and had almost zero job or money opportunities in Wyoming or North Dakota or wherever the hell she was living. She owed money (unfortunately, all legally, which was deeply annoying), she had no friends (there was a big _duh_ ), and bad influences she was trying to avoid were tracking her down.

So, out of nowhere, Siobhan dangled an all-expenses paid trip to the Hamptons for her drug addict, lower-class sister who’d never held a decent job — what had she been? Stripper, call girl, waitress? — In her entire life, with the stated intention of the two sisters reconciling.

And then, mid-reconcile, Siobhan pulled it off! She disappeared from a boat in the middle of Napeague Bay. She mixed a teeny bit of sleeping powder in her sister’s Diet Coke, waited for Bridget to conk out like the little druggie she was, and then signaled Henry to come on by with the other boat. Dear, sweet Henry. Everyone should have a lapdog like that; too bad lap dogs were just boring.

What Bridget was supposed to do: wake up, discover her sister gone, return to shore, and _tell the cops_ her sister had gone overboard. _How hard was that, bitch?_ When the cops did a preliminary search, they were going to find traces of blood in the boat that Siobhan had planted there at the cost of cutting herself. They were going to find a weapon in the boat that had Siobhan’s blood and hair on it. They were going to do a search on the presumed victim’s extremely skanky sister and discover she had a rap sheet, that she had a wildly unsavory history, and _that Bridget had been blackmailing Siobhan for the past five years_.

Honestly, that was the part of the story Siobhan was most proud of. She had set up the groundwork for her disappearance five years before. The very day after she and Andrew had married, she started funneling money to an account that traced back not to her but to Bridget. Very rhythmic deposits of money. Quite a lot of money, to be frank (although not enough that Andrew ever noticed it of course; he just thought his wife had stupidly expensive tastes).

The entire thing was brilliant: Bridget would report her sister missing, the cops would find evidence of foul play and conveniently no body, all signs would point to Bridget as a bad actor. _Boom_.

Meanwhile, Siobhan was going to take her money and go live on the Riviera. Or, at least, vacation there long enough to find a new husband. She’d already gotten the new papers and the new passport; she just needed to stay cool until the heat was off and she could get her money scott-free.

So what does Bridget do? What does that _dumb bunny lowlife_ do? Once again she messes everything up! She doesn’t report Siobhan’s disappearance. Oh no. That would be too simple. No, she manages to pretend to be Siobhan — brilliantly enough, in fact, that Siobhan’s own husband and best friend and, evidently, her own lover didn’t notice Siobhan wasn’t quite herself. Did these people not notice that Siobhan was acting different? Did they not notice that Bridget wasn’t quite up to Siobhan’s level of class and sophistication?

From the looks of it, Andrew preferred Bridget to herself.

Ha, if he only knew. Mr. Perfect preferred girls with a past, did he?

Siobhan refused to think there might be any other reason.

Meanwhile, Siobhan went to Paris to hang out for a while. She wanted to enjoy the croissants and lounge at the cafes and maybe take one of the bateaux-mouches up and down the Seine several thousand times.

The first indication that the plan wasn’t going off perfectly happened when she arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport. She walked off the plane…and threw up.

Those two brats he’d had with Gemma were enough, Henry had said. He didn’t want anything to mess up the beautiful life he and Siobhan shared together, he said. He’d had a goddamn vasectomy, he said.

Maybe Henry was under the impression that all you had to do was be able to spell the word “vasectomy” and that took care of the problem.

Siobhan refused to consider that Andrew might be the father. Oh God, there was a fate worth than death. The only thing she wanted from Andrew was his money; the idea that something as hideous as her monstrous step-daughter Juliet might be growing inside of her made Siobhan very, very upset.

Not only was she pregnant, but she was stuck in Paris without all of the lovely money she’d set aside, because it disappeared. Then it turned out that “Siobhan” was alive and well. And _happy_. Goddammit, happy? Seriously? The picture of Andrew and her sister in one of the society pages, looking far more relaxed and happy together than she had ever looked with Andrew was one of the lowlights of Siobhan’s entire life.

Maybe it was the morning sickness talking.

If hope was a plan, life would be a lot easier. No, time to face the music: Plan Numero Uno didn’t work out.

So now she was working on Plan Two: Get rid of Bridget ( _done and done_ ). Get a lot more money from Andrew ( _working on that_ ). Make Andrew behave by promising him he could have his wuvvy-duvvy Bridget back — okay, Siobhan wasn’t sure that was going to work, that was going to take some more work to make sure of. Get Henry on board with running a few more errands for her, and then drop his ass altogether. Too bad Gemma’d already dumped him; Siobhan was tickled pink by the idea of rich, over-educated, successful Gemma chasing after her leftovers.

That was fine. Siobhan was good at planning. She was going to figure something out. It wasn’t quite as awesome as sending her sister up the river for murder, but it would be something good.

And the first thing she had to do was get rid of this baby. *I mean, you know: ugh.*


	17. Bridget detoxing, calls Gemma

“Ma’am, we can’t let you leave this facility.” This nurse was nice — much nicer than the other ones on the ward, Bridget liked her very much — but her answer was always the same: _You’re here until we say you aren’t_.

“Can I make a phone call?”

“You may not, no.”

“If I were in prison, I could.”

“If you were in prison, I fear what condition you’d be in by now.”

That made Bridget smile. She didn’t smile very often, since she’d ended up in the Yorkville Hospital Treatment Program, a in-patient facility that had barbed wire and armed guards. The main patient area was where they were all allowed to roam during the day, playing games, watching TV, lining up for their meds at 10 am and 4pm. Twice a week they had group therapy. Bridget had been to one session so far. This group was a lot different than AA. For one thing, no one was holding a baton on you in AA.

The nurse — who was named Jackie or Jacqueline or something but didn’t have a pin because pins were dangerous — nodded. “They need you cleaned up before you can move to a prison.”

“I was clean.”

“When you arrived here, you had enough chemicals in you to power space flight. We have to get you off that stuff.”

“I didn’t take those drugs.”

Jackie nodded. Bridget told her this every time. All of the patients said that. This place was a lot like prison. Everyone there was innocent too.

Bridget had to do this. She had to get out of here. She had no idea if she was being held here as a possible drug suspect or a witness or what. When she asked about Siobhan and Andrew, no one here so much as batted an eyelash, so apparently no one knew anything about her connection with them. She wasn’t here because Siobhan had tried to kill her with an overdose.

Her own sister.

She had to get out of here. She could not let herself be talked out of this.

“Please, Jackie, please. I need your help. One phone call. That’s all I’m asking.”

Jackie stared at her, the skin around her eyes slightly crinkled with concern. “It could be my job, Miss. I’m sorry.”

“But —”

“If you cause a problem, if they have any reason to watch you, or follow you, or anything like that…they’re gonna look at me, you know?”

Bridget thought quickly. Jackie just needed a little push to do the right thing. “At 4pm, I get the sleep meds, right? They put me out within thirty minutes. You’ve seen me. I’m out for hours after that.” The 4pm dose was supposed to be a relaxant, but it worked like a hammer on Bridget’s system. She had no idea how this place was planning on detoxing her if they kept giving her more drugs. Maybe that was how they stayed in business. Or maybe they’d profited off of the inmates — uh, patients — not eating, because Bridget hadn’t had dinner in a week. “I will take the meds right in front of everyone. Then I’ll make a call and I’ll be out cold. No one will know. I need to make a call. No one knows I’m here.”

“Because your sister tried to kill you?”

It was clear Jackie, for all of her sympathy and nice demeanor, didn’t believe Bridget’s story. Everyone in here had a story. Bridget didn’t believe any of them either. “It is absolutely true that no one knows I’m here, Jackie. Honest to —” Bridget pointed to ceiling.

“Honest to Director Howard?” Jackie said. Both women started laughing.

“One call. Your cell phone. I will never ask again.”

§

At 4pm Bridget got in line with the other patients and when it was her turn, she got her little paper cup with the two small red pills in it. She put them on her tongue, showed the nurse, then took the cup of water and swallowed.

At 4:10, Bridget watched two patients argue over a game of Clue. Jackie still hadn’t showed up. Oh well. It was worth a shot.

At 4:15, Bridget saw Jackie through the window into the nurses’s station. She was chattering away, as though she had all the time in the world.

At 4:18, Jackie entered the main room, doing her rounds.

At 4:21, Bridget yawned as Jackie stopped by the Clue table. “You come on now, Miss Kelly,” she said. “You always fall asleep at tea time.”

Bridget stood up and walked with Jackie down the hall to the dormitory-like sleeping rooms. At the janitorial closet right before Room B, Jackie took out her ring of keys, opened the door, and pulled Bridget in. She pulled out her cell phone and put it on speaker. Jackie might be helping her out, but maybe she wanted to check Bridget wasn’t going to do a drug deal or anything.

“One call,” the nurse said.

Bridget had the phone in her hand. She had fantasized about calling Andrew, who would come and save her. But maybe he wouldn’t want to talk to her. Or maybe Siobhan would answer the phone at the co-op. Or maybe — Oh God, here it was, what was she going to do?

Bridget yawned again. She had to decide, fast.

She started dialing and she listened as the phone rang. Then there was the click of a connection being made…and then Gemma’s pre-recorded voice said, “Hey, this is Gemma. Leave a message or don’t. I have twins, make it important.” Followed by a BEEP.

Bridget said, “My name’s…Bridget Kelly. You’ve known me as Siobhan Martin for the past two months. I’m sorry for everything and I need help. I need your help. Please. I’m at the Yorkville Hospital Treatment Program in Maryland and I need to get out of here. Please.”

The phone beeped as the voicemail system ended.

Bridget stared at the phone in her hand. Then she handed it back to Jackie. “Thank you,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Jackie said.

“So am I,” Bridget said. She was sorry she’d come to a place in her life where the only person she could think to call was the wife of her twin sister’s lover.

But maybe that was just a sign from above that it was time to live her own life.

If she could ever get out of here.

§

Bridget stood at the window, staring out at the parking lot. It was a huge parking lot. Yorkville Hospital Treatment Program must have had tons of employees.

“Hey, it’s your turn to move!” someone — Leo — yelled at her.

She’d been playing a game of Monopoly for the past hour with a bunch of people that couldn’t agree on the rules and kept stealing money from the bank and from each other. _Just like real capitalism_ , she joked to herself. She picked up the die and was about to throw when Dr. Conner and two security guards came to the table.

“Come with us,” Dr. Conner said to her. Probably didn’t even remember her name. If he’d known it in the first place.

She put the die down and walked between the guards to the door of the main room. She could feel everyone watching them go. The guards were as much for her safety as to protect the doctor from her.

Dr. Conner led her down the hallway to what looked like a row of doctor’s offices. “You have a visitor,” he said. Clearly annoyed. Patients were not supposed to have visitors, except by order of the courts, maybe.

He opened a door, and Bridget saw Gemma sitting there. When Gemma saw Bridget standing there, her eyes widened and she stood up.

“What in the hell have you people been doing to her?” Gemma roared.

“Ms. Kelly has received the best possible treatment —”

“Do you people have lawyers in this state?” Gemma asked. “Because in about fifteen minutes my lawyers are going to find the best lawyers Maryland has to offer and oh my God had you people better start working on your resumés!”

Dr. Conner was not amused. “We’ll need to fill out some paperwork first.”

Gemma glared at the guards and then put her arm around Bridget. “You can send it to my people. Come on. We’re taking you home.” She looked Bridget up and down. “Well, first we need to get you some clothes.” She turned to the doctor. “She does have clothes, I assume?”

Gemma finally managed to sign enough paperwork to get Bridget out of there — right about the time that the clothing Bridget had been wearing when she arrived was found — and they went to Gemma’s car.

“Thank you,” Bridget said.

“How in the hell did you end up in there?” Gemma asked. “Nah, screw it, I don’t want to know.”

“Why did you come here?” Bridget asked her.

Gemma laughed. “Because for two months you were my best friend on the planet, and then all of a sudden you morphed back into Superbitch. And I said, Maybe twin sisters would explain that. Come on. We’re going to the train station. Let’s get you back to New York.”

“Wait!” Bridget said. “There’s a nurse who helped me.”

Gemma nodded. “I traced her cell phone from the call you left. I called her back and gave her a head’s up I was coming. If she’s smart, she’s moved to some other hospital by now.”


	18. Where's the money?

Siobhan had gone over the co-op with a fine-toothed comb. She went through every single square inch of every room — including Juliet’s, of course, and that was a mission worthy of a SWAT team. Good God, her stepdaughter was a messy, spoiled little thing, with her Prada pants in a pile at the back of the closet and a Missoni blouse on a wire hanger. _No wire hangers ever!_ Good God, didn’t children ever watch classic movies any more?

She couldn’t find any of the things she was looking for except her orange date book — ruined forever with Bridget’s ugly, horribly childish scrawl; Siobhan threw the book in the trash and bought herself a new one at Anton’s Papeterie the same day, charging it to the Martin account. _Take that, you bastard_ , she thought. On the way back from Anton’s she stopped at the new apartment and marveled at how Bridget had started screwing that up too, and then she went through the new apartment with everything save a jackhammer.

Nothing.

Maybe she should get that jackhammer.

“Where is it?” she yelled. Goddammit, Bridget was the most frustrating sister in existence.

 **Fact:** Siobhan had had a lot of money in that bank account.

 **Fact:** it was no longer there.

 **Fact:** it had been removed from the account in CASH. Cash, even in bundles of one hundred dollar bills, took up a ton of space. And it was heavy. And it was a pain in the ass to transport. It was ever so much nicer to transfer electronically, even if that had the Feds watching your every move.

 **Fact:** Honestly, that bank needed to institute a policy of taking fingerprints or something before handing out people’s savings accounts.

 **Fact:** Bridget had settled into the role of Mrs. Andrew Martin much too neatly to have socked the money away anywhere else. From all accounts, Bridget had never left the island of Manhattan the entire time she was here, let alone gotten a secret bank account somewhere far away.

 **Fact:** Bridget didn’t know how to move money in secretive ways, because she was stupid.

Well, okay, maybe that wasn’t so much a fact as it was Siobhan’s most sincere belief that her sister was incompetent at dealing with real-world problems like moving that much money around. Did Bridget seem like the kind of person who could balance a credit card, let alone keep track of big-time money?

Bridget had taken Siobhan’s money, and then she hadn’t done anything with it. So _where was it_?

A few steps from the front door of the new apartment’s building, a woman who managed to take up way more than half the sidewalk swerved into Siobhan and banged her pocketbook against Siobhan’s arm. “Look where you’re going, bitch!” the woman yelled.

Siobhan was on the verge of yelling something a heck of a lot saltier than that back, when she suddenly remembered running into Juliet as her stepdaughter prepared to go away for a weekend. Juliet had had one of the giant Louis Vuitton duffel bags with her, and when that bag had banged into Siobhan, it had been heavy.

Much too heavy to have a few beach outfits in it.

“No way,” Siobhan muttered. That little witch had stolen the money — from Bridget, which made it kind of hilarious, but also from her, which was so very not hilarious.

Where had she gone? She’d gone to some friend’s house. On Long Island. Out at the Hamptons. Dammit, could Juliet really have been clever enough to take all of that money and hide it at a friend’s house?

Okay, what would Siobhan do if she were a teenager who’d found a ton of money? Well, when Siobhan was a teenager, she would used that money to escape her life right away, but if she were a spoiled brat like Juliet, she’d probably have thought it was pocket money. No — Juliet didn’t leave it lying around: she hid it. She knew something was up.

Juliet decides to hide it, and she takes it to her friend’s house, out in the Hamptons. Now the question remained: was Juliet a total moron, or just mostly a moron? Did she hide it at the Rosenbergs’ estate…or at the Martins’?

Siobhan needed a car right away. She thought about calling Henry, but decided against it.

After all, if she found the money…he’d expect some of it.

§

“Daddy?” Juliet said. “I need to tell you something.”

He winced and he knew it was the wrong reaction to have. Didn’t parents of teenagers wish their kids would talk to them? Here Juliet was trying to reach out, and Andrew didn’t feel up to it.

It wasn’t a really good time. The private investigator had just called; the last trace he’d been able to find of Bridget was in a crack den in Connecticut. And then: completely disappearance. Andrew was sick to his stomach.

“Honey, I want to talk to you about whatever’s on your mind,” Andrew said. “Just not right now.”

“Okay, well, I just stopped in to tell you I’m marrying the leader of a motorcycle gang. I’ll be his third wife and he still has the other two, but I’ll be in charge of a heroin distribution ring, so there’s opportunities to move up in the organization.”

“What?” Andrew yelled.

“ _Now_ that I have your attention, Daddy, I need to talk to you.”

“What is it, Juliet? Things have been very difficult around here.” He hadn’t been able to tell her about Siobhan and Bridget. It was too…horrifying.

“I know! That’s what I want to talk to you about. I did something I probably shouldn’t have.”

“Oh God,” Andrew said.

“It’s not what you’re imagining.”

“You have no idea what I’m imagining.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s not that. Remember I went to Savannah Rosenberg’s house for the weekend?”

How could he forget. It was the same weekend Siobhan came back. What was that, two or three decades ago? No. Two weeks ago. Two weeks, two days, and untold hours.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Before I left, I found some money.”

“Juliet —”

“A _lot_ of money, Daddy. Like, someone’s going to flee the country money.”

He sat up. “Where did you find this?”

“In Siobhan’s room. I thought it was weird. I thought it was…well, I thought it was a lot of money.”

Andrew felt himself smile. Mostly just a nervous reaction, probably. “And what did you do?”

“I took it. I’m sorry, I know it was wrong, I was angry —”

“What did you do with it?”

“I hid it. In the Hamptons.”

Andrew pulled out his phone and called the supervisor at the garage where he kept his car parked. Most of the time it was a hassle having a car in New York City, which had taxis, car services, buses, subways. Except for the rare occasions when he needed his own transportation immediately…like now.

On the drive out toward East Hampton they talked. For what seemed in like forever. Andrew told her about Siobhan and Bridget, and Juliet said, “God, I knew something was up with her. She was suddenly such a human being!” Juliet confessed about some nonsense going on at her school — good God, but teenagers could get so dramatic. Wait until they had real problems, Andrew thought.

Then he glanced at his daughter and remembered how the day he saw her in the hospital, he wanted to make sure she was kept from any problems she could ever have.

“Do the Rosenbergs have staff?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s not at the Rosenbergs,” she said. “It’s at our house. I asked Savvy if we could stop there so I could pick some stuff up, and then I hid it.”

He smiled. Juliet had a head on her shoulders.

They got to the house on the water two hours after they started driving — the Montauk always seemed clogged with tourists if there was the barest hint of sun in the sky. Usually they’d stretch after doing that drive but both Andrew and Juliet immediately headed to the house.

“Oh, Mr. Martin, how funny that you’re here now,” said Rose, the housekeeper.

“Excuse me?”

“Your wife, she was here.”

“Siobhan?”

“Yes sir. She was here earlier today. Will she be returning to join you this evening?”

Siobhan was here? He couldn’t help it: a not-so-small part of him wanted it to have been Bridget. But how would she get here? What had happened in Connecticut?

One thing at a time. He needed to get this done before tackling anything else.

Juliet shook her head as she led her father upstairs. They glanced in the bedrooms — they’d been tore to shreds. Juliet shook her head and they kept going to the rarely-used top floor, where the gathering room and observatory were. They’d never gotten rid of Juliet’s trunk of toys, having moved it to the very back of the storage closet.

The door to the storage closet was open.

“She was thorough,” Andrew said.

“She must have been desperate,” Juliet said.

The trunk was empty. Juliet’s old toys were scattered around the closet, and the money Juliet had carefully hidden beneath stuffed bunnies and an elaborate Disney princesses playset was gone.

“Today,” Juliet said. “She was here today. Why didn’t I tell you about this yesterday.”

“Can you believe it. We’re a few hours late.”

“Does this qualify as irony?”

“What?”

“You always say Americans don’t know what true irony is. Does this count?”

Andrew stared at his daughter, his beautiful and difficult daughter, and he started laughing. Then she started laughing and the two of them lay on the floor together, laughing hysterically.

Rose, the housekeeper, came up with a tray carrying a glass pitcher of lemonade and two glasses of ice. “I thought you might like some refreshments after your drive.” The woman had a gift for ignoring the craziness around her, which was one of the reasons she’d come so highly recommended for the job. Rose set the tray on the table that faced the gorgeous seaside view and then slowly walked away, ignoring Andrew and Juliet.

Andrew sat up on the floor, his eyes still moist from laughing so hard. From wanting to cry for so long. “Rose?” he said.

The housekeeper stopped in the doorway. “Yes sir?”

“Did you speak to Mrs. Martin at all when she was here?”

Rose hesitated. “Yes sir, I did.”

“And how was she? Was she nice?”

“Mrs. Martin is a fine person, sir.”

Rose was a diplomat as well as a thoughtful house manager. Andrew made a mental note to give her a raise or more vacation or something.

Juliet stood up. “What my dad is asking is, was she like a nice, polite person who you liked, or was she a raging bitch you might want to slap?”

Rose smiled. The smile did not reach her eyes. “Mrs. Martin was the same lovely woman she has always been.”

Andrew and Juliet looked at one another. “Raging bitch,” they said in unison.

“Is there a problem?” Rose asked.

Andrew shook his head. “Oh, no, nothing. I’m planning on getting divorced, as soon as I can.”

After Rose left, Juliet said, “Did she just mutter ‘Good’?”

“I think she did.”

Juliet poured two glasses of lemonade and handed one to Andrew. “She has the money, Daddy.”

They sat there quietly, staring out at the water. It was grey-blue, mostly blue, with nice even whitecaps. A beautiful day for sailing.

“What do you think she’s going to do?” Juliet asked.

“I think she’s going to disappear again,” he said.

“That’s good, right?”

Andrew shook his head. “As long as I have any legal ties to her, God only know what she’ll do.”

“What about the baby?”

Yes. The baby. Andrew had gone out of his way not to think about that much in the past two weeks. Odds were the baby was Henry’s — statistically, a woman was far more likely to get pregnant by her lover than by her husband. But still: his wife was pregnant, and he had a responsibility. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Also, Siobhan isn’t telling what happened to Bridget.”

“Could it be that…maybe Bridget just ran away?” Juliet shrugged. “You said you found out she has a lot of…issues, right?”

“I know, but I don’t think she did. Too much of a coincidence that she disappeared just when Siobhan returns, yes? The PI said she was dropped off at the place in Connecticut. She didn’t arrive there on her own two feet.”

“So who took her there? I mean, Siobhan really only has one friend, right? The guy she was banging?”

Funny how his daughter phrasing it that way didn’t bother Andrew nearly as much as he would have thought. Because for one thing, he didn’t feel at all connected to Siobhan any more — she felt like the alien, unknown sister now, not Bridget.

And for another thing, Juliet was right: Henry was Siobhan’s only friend in the world.

He took out his phone and called the private investigator, Molyneaux. “You need to watch Henry Butler,” he said. “Siobhan just found a huge sum of money.”

“Trust me, Henry ain’t getting any of it,” Molyneaux said.

“Yes, but Henry is deeply devoted to her and will have information.” He hung up and looked at Juliet. “Ready for a drive back to the city?”

“The traffic’s going to suck, isn’t it.”

“It is.”

She nodded. “Can I drive?”

“Absolutely not. Come on.”


	19. Henry goes to Olivia for help

Henry Butler watched the little dot on his screen as it moved. It had been in Manhattan, then it went way out on the map, out to that little town that all of the fabulous people had fabulous houses in, and then started back toward Manhattan. The dot stopped in that little town was where Andrew and Siobhan owned a multimillion dollar vacation home, and seeing the dot there set off every mental alarm Henry had. Because that was just _weird_.

The dot was Siobhan. Henry was watching her progress on his phone, because he’d set up an app on her phone that showed him where Siobhan was at all times without her knowing about it. He told himself it was because he wanted to make sure she was safe at all times. It made him feel better to know where she was.

Her and the baby.

He had a very bad feeling about what was going on with her. With _them_. Siobhan had been…distant. Ever since he’d done what she asked — what they had agreed was best — and dropped Bridget off in the middle of Nowheresville, Connecticut, Siobhan hadn’t had the time of day for him. Henry didn’t like that she was sleeping at the co-op where her husband lived as well. He knew nothing was going on between Siobhan and her husband — Siobhan had made it clear a long time ago that she was disgusted by Andrew, and while Siobhan could fake a lot of emotions perfectly, her disgust always came through as true and honest. And yet it made him uneasy.

Because if Siobhan was by herself, Henry didn’t know what she was up to.

He had a bad feeling about this. He had to do something.

Siobhan had some kind of plan, and she wasn’t sharing. Which meant she was leaving him again.

Henry needed some help.

He thought, for a moment, about asking Andrew for help. Andrew knew what was going on, Henry had gleaned that much from Siobhan. Wouldn’t Andrew help him? Andrew didn’t want Siobhan; Henry did.

Unlikely he’d want to help Henry with anything though, except maybe a quick trip off the side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

And Gemma could definitely help. Except she wouldn’t even bother with the bridge. She’d just knife Henry where he stood.

He never liked that about his wife, come to think about it.

Maybe someone else could help though.

§

Olivia Charles said, “ _Who’s_ in the waiting room?”

The receptionist looked at her, eyes wide. The girl was new and she was scared, no question. “Um…he said his name was…”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, I heard you. My question is a figure of speech. Christ.”

What in the hell was Henry Butler, of all people, doing here? The last time Olivia had had a thing to do with him, he’d been at the office trying to empty the joint account he had with Gemma. Gemma had put a lock on their account altogether. Their investment firm was familiar with both the law and the financial might of Gemma’s father; Henry Butler was not getting a cent out of that account before the divorce papers were signed.

“Do you want me to send him away?” the receptionist said, with a twinge of fear in her voice.

“No, no,” Olivia said. “I’ll talk to him. This should be fun.”

She opened the door to the waiting area. There was Henry Butler, a gorgeous man with almost no swagger left. _Good_. She crooked her manicured fingernail at him and said, “You have ten minutes. Come on.”

He hopped to his feet and followed her like a dutiful schoolboy down the hall. Once in her office, he walked past her to the visitor’s chairs and she slammed the door shut behind him.

“Mr. Butler,” Olivia said, her teeth practically clenched, “we were quite clear in our last dealings —”

“This isn’t about the money,” Henry said. He sounded so…defeated. “Well, it kind of is. But I don’t know what to do.”

Olivia honestly wanted to tell him exactly what he could go do, preferably to himself, but she stopped herself. “And what sort of problem is this?”

He told her about the money that Siobhan had appropriated from her marriage. “Well…you know…over the years Siobhan has…wanted to make sure she’s taken care of…you know, in case Andrew dumped her or something.”

Piffle. Was that all? Ninety percent of the wives Olivia dealt with did the exact same thing. The other ten percent were simply morons. “How much money would you say?”

He shrugged. “Not that much, maybe three or four million?”

Sometimes living in Manhattan really did screw up one’s vision of what was a lot of money. Olivia nodded. “I’m going to be honest, here, Henry, and say I think Andrew will have gotten off cheaply.”

“But she’s going to run away again! And she’s not going to take me this time.”

And women were supposed to be the stupid, clingy ones. “Yes, well, Siobhan has issues,” Olivia said.

“After all I’ve done for her! Even the thing with Bridget.”

Olivia calmly leaned toward him, not wanting to signal how much he’d just piqued her interest. “Where did you take her?” she asked, looking at her fingernails.

“I dumped her in Connecticut,” he said.

“Still alive?” Olivia tried to sound amused.

“Yeah. Don’t know what happened to her after that. Siobhan took care of it. Siobhan sounded all happy and now this.”

 _What a piece of work is man_ , Olivia thought. _Particularly_ this* man*. “Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr. Butler? Perhaps a Coke?”

He nodded. “Double latté, two sugars.”

She rolled her eyes as she walked out the door of her office and stopped at her associate’s desk. “Dearest, would you go make Mr. Butler a double latté, two sugars? There’s a love.” As the associate dashed off, Olivia took out her phone. “Andrew,” she said, “you’d better get in here. Fast.”

“I’m stuck in traffic on Long Island.”

“I know what happened to Bridget. And Siobhan’s involved.”

“Bad?”

“Really horrible.”

There was such a long bout of silence from the phone Olivia was sure that AT&T had dropped yet another call. Finally Andrew said: “Call Geoff Molyneaux. He’s got contacts at the right place. He’ll know who to go to with this.”

§

By the time Andrew arrived at the office, Juliet in tow, Geoff Molyneaux had also gotten there. And next to the private investigator was a slender, dark-haired man with dark, intense eyes and a natty suit that simply screamed, “The Feds.”

Molyneaux cocked his head toward his companion. “This is Special Agent Victor Machado, FBI. Sounds like he’s going to want to talk to your friend in there.”

“No friend of mine,” Andrew said. “Go right ahead.”

The FBI agent went into Olivia’s office and sat down in the chair facing Henry Butler. “Henry, I’m Special Agent Machado of the FBI. We have a few things we need to talk about.”

“I need a lawyer,” Henry said.

“That’s fine. You want to take the time to wait for a lawyer, that’s fine. But let’s recap what you’ve told us. You said that Siobhan Martin is the one who stole this money? That’s a Federal offense. And she used her sister’s passport to leave the country and re-enter the country? Also Federal offenses. And taking a woman across state lines without their permission is also a Federal offense.” The agent tilted his head for a moment, as if trying to remember something. “Was that you or was that Siobhan who did that? Yeah, if you don’t want to help us…”

“I just want to get all of this settled!” Henry said.

“I understand you’re upset and you’re confused. Sounds like you weren’t the organizer or instigator of any of these things. You were trying to help your lover, right? Maybe she could help us, she knows more. But we don’t have her here, Henry. We don’t know where she is.”

“I know exactly where she is,” Henry said, waggling his phone at the FBI agent.

“Let’s go have a chat with Siobhan Martin,” said Agent Machado.


	20. Bridget sees Andrew

Here’s the thing about Manhattan that most outsiders don’t believe: it’s a small town.

Oh sure, the city of New York has about 10 million, give or take a few thousand tourists on a given day. Manhattan, the largest and busiest borough, has a fraction of that total — a large fraction, but just a fraction. Every major section of Manhattan has a fraction of _that_. And most of the people in a particular section — Greenwich Village, Mid-town, Harlem, the Upper East Side — who aren’t tourists are the people who are always there. Someone who lived in the Wall Street area might visit the Yorktown area…but not a lot.

It’s a small town. And you know what happens in small towns.

§

Gemma lightly slapped Bridget’s hands. “Stop that,” she said.

Bridget flexed her fingers before sticking her hands under her thighs. She rocked back and forth on the couch. “I can’t help it, I pick at my fingernails when I’m nervous.”

“That should have been enough to tell anyone you weren’t Siobhan.”

Bridget looked up at her. “Really?”

“That woman can spend more on manicures per month than I spent on my first car.” Gemma sat down on the couch and put her arm around the blonde woman’s bony shoulders. “You have no reason to be nervous. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Bridget smiled. At least, she was almost certain she’d smiled; it felt like the corners of her mouth turned upwards. But then the feeling in her stomach started, and her eyes started to sting, and within seconds she started crying. Again. For maybe the fiftieth or fifty thousandth time since Gemma had brought her back to New York City. “I can’t believe you’re helping me,” she said.

“Well,” Gemma said, “it’s like this. My life kind of got ruined recently. But just like the old saying goes, dark clouds really do have silver linings. And you really do find out who your friends are when things are at their worst.”

Bridget blinked and looked at Gemma. Had things really been that bad for this woman while they knew one another? “What if I turned out to be a psycho?”

Gemma laughed. “Then I’ve done my best to help a person who turned out not to need it. I still did what I thought was right.”

“So what do we do now?” Bridget asked.

“I think you need to relax and recover. That hospital…God, look at you. You’ve always been thin, but now you’re kind of scary.”

“You mean, Siobhan has been thin.”

“Okay, she’s thin, you’re almost skeletal. So I’m going to make you eat a little more before we do anything.”

Bridget opened her mouth to protest, because Gemma had already fed her six small meals since they arrived back in New York City. Instead she found herself saying, “I want to see Andrew.”

Gemma squeezed her hand. “I know.”

“But I’m scared.”

“Why would you be scared, honey? What happened to you wasn’t your fault. You didn’t deserve to be in that hospital.”

“I’m not the person you think I am.”

“You’re not Siobhan. So you’re already a better person than I can hope for.”

Okay, that was funny. Gemma was so sweet. “If I tell you who I really am, you…well, it’s understandable if you don’t want to help me any more.”

Gemma shook her head. “Nope. Don’t want to hear it.”

“But — ”

“Bridget. Hello. You don’t have to be defined by anything except who you are right here and right now. Who do you want to be? What do you want?”

“What if…what if he rejects me?”

“He _loves_ you. I saw him with you, remember? The months you spent as Siobhan — that man was happier than I’ve seen him in five years of marriage.” Gemma took her phone over to the window overlooking Central Park. “I’m going to call him right now.”

Bridget squeezed her eyes shut. She wondered if she could stop herself from putting her hands over her ears, too.

“Hey, Andrew, it’s Gemma. I know there’s been a lot of craziness lately and I’m about to add to the craziness. Guess who I have in my apartment? Don’t guess, just call me. Ciao.” Gemma sighed. “Okay, he’s busy right now.”

Bridget discovered her eyelashes were wet. “Or he’s avoiding you.”

“Nah, no one avoids me. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

“I really don’t feel like it, Gem.”

“A short walk. You need to get some exercise and you need to get some Vitamin D, and I need to get a couple or maybe a dozen of those macarons from the new Payard patisserie. Come on.” Gemma grabbed her purse.

Oh God. Gemma was going to kill her with kindness. Operative word being _kill_. Bridget put her hand on Gemma’s arm. “There’s something I need a whole bunch more than macarons.”

“I will arrange for you to see Andrew.”

Bridget shook her head. “Something I need to do more than I need to see Andrew.” She smiled. “Hi Gemma, my name’s Bridget Kelly, and I’m a drug addict. And there’s one thing I want really bad if I leave this apartment, and it’s the one thing I can’t have.”

§

_Well, that’s that then_ , Andrew thought. He left his office with Juliet, neither of them speaking. Special Agent Frank Machado and the FBI were on the case and the FBI tended not to like having outsiders interfere in their business, and it sounded like everything Siobhan had been up to for the past few months — or few years — was all up in their business.

Andrew was thrilled, however, that he now had a lead on what had happened to Bridget. He shook his head and smiled. It was still difficult to get used to the idea that her name was Bridget.

“What are you smiling about, Daddy?” Juliet asked.

“How silly this whole thing has been.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, just like he used to do when she was a little girl. He didn’t have to lean over as far any more. “And maybe it’s reaching its conclusion. Finally. At last.”

He reached up and signaled to a passing taxi. They got in, and Andrew told him their address on Park Avenue.

“What are you going to do about Bridget?” Juliet asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Her name’s Bridget, right? You’re going to find her soon. What are you going to do then?”

Andrew hadn’t been thrilled by what Molyneaux the private investigator had told him about Bridget Kelly. Drugs, stripping, god only knew what else… None of that squared with the person he’d been with for weeks.

Except she’d been lying about everything all the time.

“I don’t know her, Juliet,” he said. “She’s a complete stranger.”

“With a familiar face.”

“Oh, Siobhan’s that too,” he said. “My God, I married her, lived with her for years, didn’t know the first thing about her.”

At 75th and 3rd they were stopped at the light for two cycles. Late afternoon Manhattan traffic. Juliet had her head against the headrest, staring out at the street. Suddenly she sat up straight.

“Daddy?” she said.

He didn’t even glance up from his iPhone. “Yes, sweetie.”

“Daddy, look.”

Juliet was pointing at the church across the intersection. St. Michael’s of Bavaria or something.

No. She wasn’t pointing at the church. She was pointing to the glass doors under the sign for St. Michael’s Community Center. No, she wasn’t. She was pointing at two women walking down the sidewalk, arm in arm, heading toward the ugly modern glass doors.

One was tall and red-haired, the other was petite and blonde. And Andrew would have recognized them anywhere.

“Daddy?” Juliet said.

Good God. She was alive. She was all right. She was with Gemma — now _that_ was a surprise. Or maybe it wasn’t.

He felt a wave of confusion like he hadn’t experienced in years. He’d been so certain that he knew precisely what he felt and thought and now that he actually saw her he realized he didn’t know what he should do.

Traffic started to move again.

Maybe doing something was wrong. Maybe not doing something was wrong. He didn’t have to do anything right now. No one was keeping score.

 _No_ , he thought. _Better to do something and find out it’s the wrong thing than default to not doing anything._

“Pull over!” Andrew said to the driver. He took out his wallet and handed a hundred dollars to his daughter. “You going to be okay without me?”

“I’m fine, I live in taxis,” she said.

The driver pulled up against the red curb and Andrew dashed out of the car. He ran against cross traffic, which honked at him (even though it was hardly moving fast enough to be effected by one pedestrian) and he ran down the block to the doors of St. Michael’s, which were swinging shut as he got there.

He heard female voices echoing around the corner. He ran to catch up, turning the corner, saw Gemma reaching for a door handle.

“Gemma!” It was easier to say her name.

Both women looked back at him.

Bridget stared at him with huge eyes. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and she looked more tired and frail than the last time he’d seen her. How had he ever confused her for Siobhan? It didn’t matter that they were identical twins. They looked completely different to him.

Gemma whispered something to Bridget, who shook her head. “It’s okay,” she replied. She walked toward Andrew, who felt completely frozen where he stood.

 _Get moving, you prat_ , he thought. He walked toward her. “Bridget,” he said.

“You know my name,” she said.

She was three feet away. He could touch her. He could put his arms around her, just like he’d been thinking about.

“I know a lot of things,” he said.

He didn’t hug her. He should have, he knew that. But then the moment was gone.

Gemma stood beside Bridget. “Andrew, you kinda need to leave her alone for a while.”

“What I need is to talk to her!” he said. He looked at Bridget. “We need to talk.”

Bridget put her hand on his arm. Bridget touched him instead of him embracing her. Thereby completely showing what a coward he was. “We will. I know you probably have a lot of questions.”

“But not now,” Gemma said.

“Not now,” Bridget said.

“Look, Andrew, I’ll call you, okay? We’ll set something up. When Bridget’s feeling a little better.”

Andrew put his hand over Bridget’s. It was so small and so cold under his. He laced their fingers together.

“I know you want to find some kind of closure,” Bridget said, “and I can’t blame you. But right now I can’t.”

Closure? What in the hell was closure? He didn’t care about that. He had no idea what he did care about, that was definitely true.

“When?” he asked. “Were you ever going to let me know you were alive? I thought you were dead.”

“I know,” Bridget said. “We will talk about these things.”

“Please, Andrew,” Gemma said.

“Do I get no say here?” he said.

“No,” Gemma said.

“It’ll be okay,” Bridget said, and she dropped her hand from his arm.

She was going to walk away from him.

“Bridget,” he said. When she looked at him, he bent over and kissed her. On the cheek, but a kiss, nonetheless. “Please.”

“It’s important to me too, believe me,” she said.

Gemma pulled open the door and let Bridget walk through. She glared at Andrew before walking through the doorway herself, letting the door swing behind her slowly.

The sign in the window said **Narcotics Anonymous. Please, participants only**.

Andrew stood in the hall for five minutes before finally turning around and heading back to the door to the street.

When he got to the sidewalk his phone started ringing. Maybe Bridget had left the meeting?

No. It was Agent Machado.

“How soon can you get to your co-op?” the FBI agent asked.

“Why?”

“Because that’s where Siobhan Martin went,” he said.

Oh God. Juliet had been headed there as well.

“I’m four blocks away,” he said. And he started to run.


	21. Siobhan's End

She had the money.

God, those had to be the most beautiful words in the English language: _I’ve got the money_.

Siobhan had the money, she’d ditched Henry, and now all she had to do was return this car she’d borrowed from the co-op’s pool of cars made available to residents.

Okay, and then she had to stop in the co-op for one last time. Not because she was sentimental, but because there was a key there. A key to a locker at a bus depot.

When Siobhan had gone out to Long Island to find the money did she remember the locker at the station.

After Siobhan’s “death” on the boat, when they searched Bridget, the cops would find a key to a locker, and the locker held a number of items incriminating to Ms. Kelly in the matter of the Tragic Death of Mrs. Siobhan Martin. The idea being that Bridget had stored them there in order to make a quick getaway after murdering her sister, natch.

Only she hadn’t called the cops.

And now everyone knew Siobhan wasn’t dead, of course.

So now that stupid locker looked like a gigantic arrow pointing back to Siobhan as part of some frame-up.

Bridget, of course, would not have had any idea of what that key was. There was a distinct possibility that no one would ever find that key and the entire thing was a moot point.

Siobhan did not leave loose ends. And lockers were opened after six months.

In the co-op, Bridget’s crappy little Target shoulder bag was stashed in the back of the immaculate closet, behind the rows of Siobhan’s Hermes Kelly and Birkin bags. The same crappy bag Siobhan had dropped the bus locker key into oh these many months ago. She reached in and pulled the key out. The flush that ran down her body from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes felt sinfully sexual it was so hot.

_Get the key, and get out._

__Siobhan was deeply sad to be leaving all of those Hermes bags, but she had the remaining piece to the puzzle.

When she walked back into the foyer, she realized she wasn’t alone. Staring back at her was her dumbass stepdaughter Juliet.

After a couple of seconds of the two women staring at one another, Juliet started screaming.

§

Everything happened kind of fast after that.

Andrew was there, out of nowhere it seemed, pulling Juliet away. A man in a slick grey suit who had the world’s darkest eyes shouted some kind of instructions into his phone. The key she’d risked everything to go back and get was pried out of her hand. The bag of money disappeared. No one talked to her. No one read her her rights or tried to impress upon her the seriousness of the situation. Everyone in the co-op ignored her altogether, in fact.

Except for when Siobhan made a dash for the elevator. Then the man in the slick grey suit moved pretty damn fast.

Andrew grabbed Siobhan by the arm. “May I speak to my wife in private for a moment?”

Mr. Slick glanced at his watch. “Make it fast. She’s headed downtown as soon as the other agents arrived.”

§

Andrew clicked a ballpoint pen and reached for the pad he always kept in the same place on his desk. “We don’t have much time. I’m going to offer you a deal. One time offer only. Take it or leave it.” He wrote. “If you have the baby, I pay for your lawyers to deal with this mess and I also put this amount in a bank account for you, in your name, free and clear. As our _total_ divorce settlement.” He held up the pad and showed it to her.

Siobhan’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “That’s _it_?”

He shook his head. “In return, you behave yourself, you take care of yourself, with frequent doctor checkups and blood tests, that sort of thing. A couple of good lawyers can run interference with the government for a few months and keep you out of prison until you deliver. When the baby is born, we do a blood test and you hand over complete and total custody to whoever the father turns out to be, no questions asked, no further contact necessary. Or, for that matter, probably wanted.”

“And if I don’t agree to this?”

“That’s fine. There’s no alternative scenario. Well, other than there will be no divorce settlement whatsoever other than this one. You can do whatever you want, and I know you, you don’t want to take anyone else’s plan. So what you do now, it is wholly your choice. I’m making you an offer that you can, in fact, refuse. It’s an offer of something you want: money. For something I want: a divorce and that baby if it turns out to be mine. If you’re not interested, it is absolutely your prerogative. And you’ll be on your own with the FBI.” He stood up. “You have until Agent Machado’s fellow agents arrive.”

Andrew walked to the door.

“Jesus Christ,” Siobhan said. “I don’t need ten minutes. I’ll do it.”

Andrew closed his eyes and mouthed the words _Thank you_ before turning around. “I will put the money in escrow today. It will be transferred as soon as custody is determined and arranged.”

“Bastard,” she yelled.

“I’ll arrange to have a OB-Gyn visit you wherever they’re going to keep you,” Andrew said. “And Siobhan?”

“What?”

“Are you at all curious how your sister is doing?”

Siobhan smiled at him. “Why the hell would I care how that bitch is doing?”

He shrugged. “Most people are curious. And you’re so much more competitive than most people. And of course it has quite a bearing on your legal future, now doesn’t it. Whether she’s alive or dead or…”

Siobhan rolled her eyes. “So tell me.”

Andrew waited thirty seconds. Then he smiled, and shook his head. “And make it easy for you? My lawyers will be in touch with you with the paperwork.”

§

The doors of the elevator opened in the lobby and one of the FBI agents next to her poked Siobhan in the side. “This way,” he said.

Ugh. This was embarrassing. Why on Earth were they treating her this way?

A man sitting on the couch underneath the replica of a Jacques-Louis David painting jumped up and ran toward her.

“Honey?” Henry said. “Sweetheart, are you okay? How’s the baby?”

Siobhan looked at him. She’d seen his face so many times, in so many different intimate and important settings. And this was like the first time she’d ever seen him. God, how much time had she wasted on this man? He was probably the reason she was in this predicament now — it wouldn’t surprise her at all if he’d made some gigantic mistake with one of the things she’d asked him to do or maybe he’d even gone running to the cops because he was worried he’d done something wrong.

Henry Butler. Well, she’d looked for someone stupid and faithful who would do what she told him, and boy, hadn’t she succeeded.

She shook her head and looked away from him. “Get me out of here,” Siobhan told the agents.


	22. Bridget's Chain

Somewhere — she couldn’t remember where any more — Bridget had read an interview with Jerry Seinfeld. The writer asked Seinfeld the secret of his productivity and Seinfeld had told a story about how he kept a calendar up on the wall. And every day when he wrote some jokes, he marked the day with a big red X. After several days in a row of writing, he’d made a chain of X’s across the calendar. The trick to productivity, he said, was to make sure he didn’t break the chain. Keep those X’s going.

The second day of going to Narcotics Anonymous, Bridget bought a calendar and a big red pen at the local Duane Reade. She tacked it up on the wall of the small bedroom Gemma had given her — she was pretty sure it had been Gemma’s shoe closet at one point, and it was the most beautiful hundred square feet Bridget had ever seen — and she marked off two red X’s.

People new to recovery (or starting over, again) were always told “Ninety meetings in ninety days.” At the beginning, working the recovery program was not just the most important thing in your life, it was the _only_ thing. You could skip bathing, you could wear the same damn clothes every day without washing them, you could forget to eat, but you could not miss a meeting.

By day ten, Bridget felt ridiculously proud of her chain of ten X’s.

On day twenty-one, Bridget felt secure enough to celebrate three weeks of going to meeting by eating a French Kiss cookie at Jacques Torres’s shop on Amsterdam. Then she and Gemma and the twins and the nanny walked home through the park to the East Side.

On day thirty-five Bridget had a fleeting idea that she was doing _okay_ , she was doing better than okay, she was _fine_ , she could skip one day.

She looked at the calendar.

She went to _two_ meetings that day.

On day forty-six, it was such a beautiful day in New York. A placid, sunny day that had the perfect temperature and humidity. So she decided to take a long, rambling route back to Gemma’s. She loved Gemma unbelievably much — God knew Bridget could never pay back all of the kindness and generosity Gemma had shown her over these past few months — but the room in Gemma’s apartment was kind of small to live in full-time. Gemma told her to treat the whole place as her own but…Gemma had her family, she had her work, and periodically, when the twins were at school, she had Henry over for divorce negotiations that usually culminated in screaming matches that devolved into crying matches. Well, then Henry would cry and beg Gemma to work things out.

Bridget wasn’t sure, but day forty-six felt like it might be a Henry day, so she decided to walk.

She was very careful when she went out for walks on the Upper East Side. She never went within five streets of Andrew’s co-op. Sometimes she thought about it, sure. She would just walk by, see how it felt…and if she just happened to run into Andrew she’d explain that her being there was a mistake. You know, an “Oops, teehee” kind of mistake.

Bridget knew about those kind of mistakes. She had made a career out of them.

Every time she so much as idly thought about going anywhere near Andrew’s, she made sure to admit it in meeting. Every time. She couldn’t lie to herself, not now. No one else there ever told her what to do. But whenever she said it out loud, she knew precisely what she had to do: “Give it time.” She wasn’t in any condition to deal with Andrew Martin.

But she honestly forgot one thing when she went out walking. It had been an honest mistake, not an “Oops, teehee.” Maybe her brain was operating on a different level and wasn’t letting her in on its plans. Who knew.

Whatever the reason…Bridget walked down the wrong street.

§

Bridget was walking down Park, sipping her unsweetened black iced tea, when she turned onto East 62nd. As soon as she did it, she knew she’d done the wrong thing. She actually felt her breathing speed up. Her stomach started cramping and she wondered if she was going to throw up.

She was going to walk past the new apartment. The one Andrew and Siobhan had bought and Gemma was remodeling for them. The one she’d actually thought about living in. Only once or twice but she’d allowed herself to have the fantasy.

 _Turn around_ , she told herself. It had been an honest mistake. She simply hadn’t been paying attention.

Her feet slowed down.

You’ve made it forty-six days, she told herself. You’re doing great.

What if he was there? Had Andrew moved into that apartment? Was Siobhan there? Bridget hadn’t asked Gemma for any details of what had happened to her twin, and Gemma hadn’t volunteered any. “It can wait,” her friend had said simply. “It’s worth the wait.”

She found herself thinking about the day she and Andrew had gone over what seemed like 1500 possible fabric swatches for the leather couch. This shade of brown or that shade of brown? This level of softness or not? Andrew’s arm had pressed against her as he would hold up two swatches before saying, “I can’t see any damned difference, can you?”

Bridget had really liked planning that couch.

 _Go back_ , her brain said. _Go back to Park Avenue._

“I’ll be fine,” she said to herself. She could handle this. It was just a block. It was just an apartment. It was old news.

She headed toward Lexington Avenue.

She wouldn’t look at the building.

It couldn’t take that long to walk one city block.

She stared straight ahead as she walked.

_How far was it between two avenues, anyhow?_

__She was doing so well. She was focused on the lamppost at the end of the block and the green street sign hanging off of it.

Then she passed the doorway to the apartment’s building.

And she walked right into a trio of people walking out the front door, an older woman in Donna Karan with gold jewelry and big earrings, and a man and woman in their thirties. The doorman was holding the door for them. When he saw Bridget, he reached up and touched his cap. “Mrs. Martin,” he said.

That phrase sounded so alien to her now. She missed hearing it. “No,” she said.

The people leaving her looked at her then. “Siobhan?” one of them said. The older woman, too much plastic surgery, her hair colored too black for her age.

“No,” Bridget said. Oh good God, had she made a mistake. A gigantic mistake. Why had she walked down this block?

The older woman shook her head. “You look —”

“No,” Bridget said, louder this time. Much too sharply. She regretted it as soon as it came out. And then she tensed up, because she knew better than anyone that regret led to stupid behaviors.

“You own the apartment we just looked at?” said the man.

It was then that Bridget saw the real estate sign. Small and tasteful, just enough to indicate there was a property available in this building.

Andrew was selling the apartment. He’d given up the idea of moving there.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“It’s a lovely apartment,” said the female half of the couple.

“Leave me alone!” Bridget screamed, and she walked away. Or ran. Or something. She didn’t know what.

The next thing she knew she was walking along Second Avenue, somewhere in the low 50s. Somehow she’d walked past the approach to the Queensboro Bridge without even noticing.

Missing time. Not paying attention to surroundings. Not caring what happened to herself.

Bridget was in the danger zone. The kind of mindspace where she could easily end up doing something to stop the pain from happening. To stop the voice in her head that called her fourteen kinds of idiot every single minute of every day.

If she knew someone who was holding, she would call them right now.

There was always one guy at the NA meetings who made it clear he could get stuff.

She ducked into the doorway of a Vietnamese tailoring shop and took out the cell phone Gemma had given her. She thought about the guy from meetings.

She called Gemma. “I need help,” she said.

“Okay, where are you?” Gemma said. “I’m coming to get you.”

“I’ll get a taxi,” Bridget said.

“Don’t be a little idiot,” Gemma said. “Where are you? Chop chop.”

Bridget told her and twenty minutes later a yellow cab pulled up. Gemma rolled down the window and waved at her. “C’mon,” she said.

Bridget got in. Gemma told the taxi driver to drive around for a while — and then gave him the exact route to drive, no funny business either or she’d report his license. “Tell me.”

Bridget told her. The third time she said, “It was a mistake, I swear!” Gemma rolled her eyes and told her to be quiet.

“Okay, here’s the deal, do you want to hear the deal?” Gemma said. She didn’t wait for Bridget’s response. “Yes, Andrew is selling that apartment. He is unloading it at an unbelievable price. He is also selling the co-op.”

Bridget sucked in her breath. “Where’s he —“

“Shush. Whose turn is it to talk right now? I have no idea where he’s planning to live. Juliet is going to college next fall. And she’s probably going way the hell away from here. Maybe UCLA, I don’t know. And Siobhan…”

Bridget felt every muscle in her body tense. She had been waiting to hear about Siobhan. Waiting to get subpoenaed or called as a witness or something. There had to be some kind of charges for what happened to her, right? So far there had been nothing.

Gemma’s head bobbled right and left as she clearly debated what to tell Bridget. “Okay. I don’t know anything for sure, but Siobhan isn’t in jail or anything. Her lawyers are fighting with the government and the Feds and whoever. I don’t know much.”

Bridget wound some of her blonde hair around her fingers. A nervous habit that had gotten much worse since starting NA. “Does…does Henry ever see her?”

“No. Poor fucker’s miserable about it too. Things look terrible for him, legally. He deserves it. But not seeing Siobhan is making him crazy. She must be five or maybe even six months pregnant now.”

They didn’t say anything for the next several blocks.

“He’s pretty sure the baby’s his?”

Gemma shrugged. “Apparently they were going at it like rabbits. And statistically lovers are more likely to father children over husbands.”

It took Bridget a few seconds to figure out what Gemma had said. “Really?”

“Yeah, I know, right? But it’s true, you can look it up.” She shrugged. “I have a book at home that explains it, if you want to read it.”

“So your kids are going to have a little brother or sister.”

Gemma let out a long and low whistle. “I know. I know. And they should know the kid, right? Same blood. At the same time I feel like saying, No fucking way, you know? It’s bad enough I have to pay Henry any alimony at all, but child support? For some other woman’s kid?”

The taxi drove them by the United Nations. Bridget looked at the row of flags.

“Can I talk to him?”

“Henry? Oh, no, of course you don’t mean…” Gemma reached up and started picking at her lower lip, which was her worst nervous habit. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Bridget.”

“Have you talked to him since…”

Gemma pinched her lip a little harder, and then nodded. “Just once. A few weeks ago. Maybe a month ago. I honestly don’t… Yeah, we talked.”

Bridget wanted to ask a thousand questions. _How is he? How did he look? Did he mention me?_ Instead, she waited. For what seemed like thousands of years.

“He’s the one who told me about the lovers and husbands thing. About kids, I mean.” Gemma shook her head. “You know, because it affects both of us.”

“I get it,” Bridget said.

The taxi driver honked at someone.

“He asked how you were doing,” Gemma said.

Bridget felt herself shiver. “What did you say?”

“You were taking it one day at a time. And so far you were doing good, as good as can be expected, maybe better. He didn’t push for more.”

“How was he doing?”

Gemma looked at her. “He’s been really hurt by everything that’s happened. His whole world has been destroyed.”

“Siobhan did that to a lot of us.”

“No, not Siobhan. You. You were his whole world, Bridget. Give the man a break.”

Bridget sucked in her breath at Gemma’s sharp reaction. “I never meant—”

“I think it’s maybe not such a good idea for you guys to talk. Maybe not for a long time.”

Bridget nodded.

“And Bridge?” Gemma said.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t walk down 62nd any more, okay?”

Bridget nodded. She knew better.

She couldn’t leave well enough alone though.

§

She marked her fifty-eighth red X on her calendar. Chain unbroken! Go Team Bridget! She came back to the apartment and had breakfast with Gemma and the kids before they set off on a family trip to the Zoo with a couple of other school families. Bridget passed on going. “Seeing all of those animals in cages always makes me sad,” she said.

“You’re okay?” Gemma seemed suspicious, because Bridget never went to the earliest morning meeting.

Bridget smiled. “I’m fine.”

When the apartment had been quiet for half an hour, Bridget took out her phone. She wasn’t being impulsive. She had debated this moment with herself endlessly, wondering if she could fool herself into making an “Oops, teehee” mistake. But it wasn’t. The phone call was something she wanted to do and she had to be upfront about it. She could tell herself she was working the “Make amends to those you’ve hurt” step, but she wasn’t. She just wanted to hear his voice again.

If he hung up on her, that was his choice.

And he’d probably changed his cell phone number anyhow. Which would make her life easier, wouldn’t it.

She dialed, and on the third ring he answered. After a few seconds, Andrew said, “Hello?”

Oh God. That voice.

Bridget closed her eyes. She almost hung up.

“Um, hi,” she said, before she could hang up.

“Bridget?” he said. The name sounded so strange in his voice.

“Hi, it’s me,” she said.

There was a few years’ worth of quiet on the line.

“Can I see you?” Andrew asked.

“Not yet,” Bridget said.

“Oh.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s… I really want to get to my ninety days first. Make that milestone.”

“What are you at?”

“Fifty-eight.”

“Thirty-two to go then.”

 _Stop stalling_ , she told herself. Bridget walked around the living room in circles. She felt her eyes beginning to well up. She had to talk fast. “I’m really sorry, Andrew. I want you to know that.”

“About what?” he asked. His voice was so soft.

How could she put this? About lying to him? About pretending to be her sister? About being such an amazing fuck-up who was not under any circumstances the kind of woman she wanted to be, let alone the kind of woman someone like Andrew Martin would pay attention to?

“For not telling you how I felt when I had the chance,” she said. And the tears began falling.

“I need to see you,” he said.

“I can’t.” Then she added quickly: “Not yet. At least ninety days.”

“Thirty-two,” he said.

She smiled and the tears running down her cheeks ran into her mouth. “Yes,” she said. “In thirty-two days, I’ll call you again.”

After she hung up, she sat on the sofa for half an hour, letting all of the tears out.

Then she grabbed her phone and her keys and went to her second meeting of the day.

Now she had a goal. She had a goal of thirty-two more straight days of meetings.

Because if she missed one, she was going to have to start over, and she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting another ninety days before she called him again.


	23. Fail big

“I need to find a job,” Bridget said.

Gemma sat on the sofa beside her, flipping through _Architectural Digest_ and snorting at various designs. She glanced over at Bridget. “Why?”

“Because I need to feel as though I’m connected to the real world,” Bridget told her. “For the past year I’ve been in recovery, I’ve been Siobhan, I’ve been doped up, and I’ve been in recovery again. I feel as though I’ve lost an entire year of my life. Who am I? I don’t even know.”

“This isn’t about finding your own place, right?” Gemma asked her. “Because no way do you find anything you can afford closer than White Plains.”

“Where’s White Plains?”

“Exactly, you see my point.” Gemma put her magazine down. “But I think this is not about you finding work. This is about Andrew.”

Bridget shook her head. No, she didn’t want to think about that.  
Gemma smiled. “You’re coming up on your ninety day mark. You told me you were going to call Andrew after that. You are looking for excuses to get out of it, girl.”

“Honestly, this has nothing to do with that.”

“The human brain will go out of its way to tell us the most ridiculous things, Bridget. It’s clear as day to me that you’re scared of calling him. You mope about him forty-eight hours a day, and you’re scared to talk to him. Why?”

“There are only twenty-four hours in a day, Gem.”

“You are a powerful moper. Tell me what your reasons are and I will rate them for accuracy.”

Gemma sat there, staring at her. A million ways to change the subject sprang to mind — _Hey, how ‘bout those Jets?_ But Bridget knew that would only confirm what her friend was saying. She took a deep breath. “He doesn’t know me.”

“Okay, I’ll give that one a B. It’s true, he didn’t know you as Bridget Kelly. But he knew you, okay? He knew there was something wrong with Siobhan and he knew there was something really right about you.”

“I don’t know him.”

“F.” When Bridget started to argue, Gemma held up a hand. “Not interested. You get an F on that one. You are so wrong. Move on.”

Much as she desperately wanted to, Bridget couldn’t avoid the reason that she was terrified The real reason she knew seeing Andrew was pointless. “He isn’t going to like me. I’m what you call the problem child. I’m a mess. I bring absolutely nothing to this, and he has everything.”

Gemma’s blue eyes gazed directly into Bridget’s and she stabbed her index finger into the air for emphasis. “Let me give you the one piece of advice that my parents gave me that ever meant anything, okay? For the rest of your life, I want you to remember this.”

Bridget nodded.

“Fail big.”

“What?”  
“You’re afraid of being rejected. Well, let him. Let him reject you. Don’t you reject you. Ever.”

“But —”

Gemma shrugged. “So you give it a try and it doesn’t work. Then at least you know. Maybe he’s a snob and says something awful. You know what? That’s on him. Then he’s an asshole and you know that he’s not the right guy for you. Maybe the two of you have a really honest relationship and in three months you’re both like, ‘What the hell were we thinking? Ew.’ At least you found out.

“And you know, Bridget? The world is an amazing place when you accept the risk you might get rejected. Because you might as well try bigger things and fail harder. Fail big, honey. It’s the only way to know you’re really alive.”

Bridget burst into tears. “I can’t.”

Gemma threw down her magazine and gave Bridget a big hug. “Honey, I want you to do exactly what you’re doing, only I want you to start saying ‘I can.’ Can you do that for me?”

“You can survive anything.”

“You’re right. I survived having my heart trampled on by Henry Butler by saying, I can do this. I wake up every day to deal with the two most terrifying and selfish and uncaring brats in the world, with no husband, with no father here, and I say, I can do this. I lose a client for my business and I say, I can get new ones. I have no idea how that’s going to happen, but it’s nice to have someone in my corner, you know what I mean?”

Bridget repeated I can do this over and over. The first ten times felt ridiculous, the second ten times felt foolish, and the third ten times

She looked at Bridget. “See what I mean? Isn’t that the most awesome feeling in the world? Whenever you find yourself saying, _I can’t_ , just start saying _I can_. And damn if that doesn’t change everything.”

§

Bridget took the ninety-day pin from the hand of her meeting leader and stared at it for a second, unable to say anything. It was a stupid, cheap little pin and it was hard as hell to earn. And now it was even harder to see, because her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.

She looked from her hand into the audience, where Gemma was sitting and applauding quietly.

Then she looked at the back of the room, where she saw Andrew standing.

He smiled at her, gave her a tiny half-wave, and then ducked out.


	24. Together again

“Um, hi.”

Pause. A long pause. Maybe he hadn’t actually answered the phone. Did the voicemail pick up? Maybe the voicemail had answered and there was no one there and she should try to call another time.

“I was afraid you weren’t going to call,” he said, and she squeezed her eyes shut with relief.

“It’s been really crazy here. Honest. The twins’ had their birthday and I helped with that. And then Gemma had this client who completely freaked out on her, I mean, it was scary, and anyhow —”

“It’s okay, Bridget. You did call.”

Long pause. Might have been five seconds, might have been five years.

“So, I made it to ninety days!”

“Gemma told me when it was. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No. I don’t mind at all. Thanks.”

Another five year pause.

Bridget closed her eyes. She hadn’t ever been this nervous talking to a guy. What did you say when you honestly cared what the man’s reaction was? What would she have said when she was a pro? _Hey, just relax, you and me, we have a connection, we’ll see where it goes and have some fun in the meantime._ She took a deep breath in and decided she had to go ahead and say what she’d called him to say. “I’d like to see you.”

“I’d like that very much.”

Mountain ranges rose and were destroyed by erosion. Species evolved and new solar systems spun into existence.

“So, um, how do we do this?” she asked.

“How do you feel about lunch?”

“It’s one of my three favorite meals of the day.” And Bridget exhaled.

§

She changed clothes four times. She didn’t have that many outfits to choose from. This dress was too sexy. This dress wasn’t sexy enough. This skirt combo looked like she was trying too hard. And jeans and a blouse looked like she didn’t even care.

“Did you ask where you’re having lunch?” Gemma asked.

“Um, no.”

Gemma held up the second dress and said, “Wear this one, and I’ll loan you a scarf. Don’t get the scarf dirty.”

§

Bridget arrived at the restaurant five minutes early.

Andrew was already there.

He didn’t see her as she walked in. He was turned away from the door as he chatted with the chef, who wore all whites and was describing something to Andrew with huge expressive hand gestures. Andrew was smiling.

God, he was handsome. And he was smart. And he was a really great person. All in one guy.

God, her sister was a complete fool.

God, maybe she was too.

The chef saw her first and from his expression Bridget guessed he recognized her, or thought he did. Andrew turned to see what the chef was looking at and his expression immediately changed, from amused and engaged to… Thoughtful? She hoped it was thoughtful and maybe simply peaceful, because the idea that he was having second thoughts about so much as having lunch with her was too painful to bear.

“Your wife?” the chef said.

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m getting divorced. This is Bridget.”

And then Andrew took her by the hand and leaned over to kiss her. On the cheek.

The look on the chef’s face was kind of priceless, to be honest. Bridget might have laughed, except she was concentrating too hard on the tingling sensation centered in the middle of her left cheek.

“Hi,” said Bridget.

“Hi,” said Andrew.

He held her hand as they walked through the dining room and into the kitchen, where the chef’s table had been prepared in one corner. And he kept holding her hand as she sat down. When they were sitting he interlaced their fingers.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek again. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come,” he said.

She giggled. “So was I. I mean, I was afraid you weren’t going to be here.”

“I was prepared to go over to Gemma’s co-op and insist she send you out.”

She squeezed his hand. “Just so you know, I’m not expecting anything. From you. From this. Anything.”

“Well, so far as that goes, I am,” he said. “Just so you know.”

She felt gripped by panic. “What?”

“Last year, while we were together, you made me happier than I thought I was ever going to have a right to be,” he said. “And maybe too much has happened for us. But I am here and you are here, and I would really like to find out what that means for both of us.”

“I lied to you about who I am the entire timer.”

“What does it say I couldn’t figure out you weren’t even my wife? Although I must have known you weren’t here, because I felt closer to you than I ever did with her. Also, my wife tried to kill you and then she screwed up your sobriety. I’m going to call us even.”

They stared at one another for a moment.

Then Bridget leaned over and kissed him. A light kiss, on the lips. She took in a deep breath of the smell of him: Ivory soap, a little sweat, his morning tea. She’d forgotten what he smelled like. It smelled better than great. It smelled like home.

He squeezed their fingers together harder.

“So what do you want to know?” she asked.

“Only the important stuff,” he said.

§

She gave him a general overview of how she’d spent her twenties. Andrew was a canny guy; he could read between the lines. This wasn’t her first rodeo, no matter how much they both wanted that.

He told her about his first marriage. Then he gave a short synopsis of his marriage to Siobhan. And he came right out with what his fault was, both times. Even with Siobhan.

“I knew there was something wrong, and I didn’t listen to my intuition. I know I’m supposed to say ‘gut,’ because I’m a man, but let’s face it, we’re talking about intuition here. And I failed to listen to mine.” He paused. “I’m not making that mistake again.”

“I’ve always navigated by my feelings and that hasn’t always worked so good either,” she said. “I’m trying to be a little more rational about my decisions.”

“Not too rational,I hope,” Andrew said.

He leaned over and kissed her again. Still just a kiss on the lips, but it lasted longer this time. It felt much more natural. Much more real.

When he pulled away, she kept her eyes closed and savored the moment.

“What would you say is your most important personality trait?” he asked.

“I’m an optimist,” she said, and he laughed. “Come on. With my history? I have to be. What’s yours?”

“I’m a romantic.” He ran his finger down the line of her jaw. “And as I’m sure you know, those two traits work extremely well together.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she raised her hands to her face, defensively, willing herself as hard as she could not to cry, but the tears came anyhow. She sat back on her bench, their hands apart. “I am really scared.”

He nodded. “We’d both be insane not to feel a little scared.”

“I look exactly like her.”

Andrew shrugged. “Then it’s good thing I have a type, isn’t it?”

That made her laugh. She reached over and took his hand again. As if she needed confirmation: she was in love. And she was going to follow Gemma’s instructions and fail big on this one.

She kissed him, A furious, maddening kiss. Everything she’d been feeling over the past month, three months, six months, whatever poured out of her. She didn’t care that everyone in the kitchen could see

They rested their foreheads together for a moment.

“Will you come with me after lunch?” he whispered.

He didn’t need to be more specific than that. She nodded.

§

“Let me give you the grand tour,” he said as they stepped off the elevator, hands entwined.

The grand tour. Because there was no hurry. They had all the time in the world. They weren’t teenagers who didn’t know what they were doing. They weren’t strangers who had to join in furtive, secret ways. They were adults who knew what they were doing.

The first thing she noticed about the place was what _wasn’t_ there: the giant picture of Siobhan that had hung right near the elevator was gone. In its place was something large and blue and coppery and abstract.

The living room had been completely redone, with all new furniture. “I’m not sure why I did that, honestly,” he said.

“Probably felt pretty necessary. Get rid of all the bad vibes.”

He nodded. “Every time I walked in I saw something Siobhan had bought. Redecorating the place probably cost less than the therapy would have.”

“Gemma told me you’re selling the co-op and the apartment.”

“Yes. I’ve had two offers on the apartment, so that should be dealt with soon. The co-op’s going to take a little longer. The market is terrible right now.”

“What are your plans?”

He looked at her. “Haven’t decided yet.”

All the furniture was different. All the draperies were different. All of the plates and glasses in the kitchen were different. The co-op felt much more homey and less calculating than it had with its previous interior.

They were standing in the morning room. “I like it,” she said. “The whole place suits you.”

“I like it much better right now.” He put a hand on her hip as he kissed her.

She opened her mouth as she put her arms around his neck and raised herself on her toes. He put both hands on her hips and pulled her toward him, their bodies fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle, his back hitting the side of the granite-topped island.

She broke the kiss and pulled away.

He looked at her, concerned, his hands still on her. His mouth was red and swollen. “Bridget…”

“This would be easier if we were somewhere where the difference in our heights wasn’t so noticeable,” Bridget said.

“Oh, thank God,” Andrew said, his voice breathy.

“Is Juliet here today?”

“No.” He smiled. “I asked her to go over to a friend’s house.”

“Just in case.”

He nodded. “Just in case.”

They walked hand in hand down the corridor to the master suite, which had received the same treatment as the rest of the house. New linens, new bed frame, new artworks. All of Siobhan’s things were gone. Half of the dressing room was empty. The place felt lighter, somehow. The heavy, oppressive presence of Siobhan had been exorcised entirely.

They sat on the bed and kissed. Small pecks and then deeper, more passionate kisses. There was a strange absence of pressure surrounding the whole business. Normally if you were in a bedroom and you were making out with a guy, there was exactly one way that situation was going to end. But Bridget knew that she could say no at any time. If she had decided she had to leave, she was absolutely certain Andrew would let her go.

She wasn’t going anywhere. She had exactly what she wanted, right here and now. Maybe it wouldn’t be there tomorrow, but she didn’t really care.

Her fingers undid the top buttons of his crisp white shirt, and she slipped her hand inside, against his warm skin, to press against his chest. She could feel his heart beating there. Rapid. Alive.

She leaned back from him and undid the rest of the shirt’s buttons quickly. Then she placed her hands against his skin, against his breastbone, against the warm skin and light dusting of chest hair.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

“You’re here,” she said.

He cupped the back of her head with his hand and pulled her mouth to his for a long, satisfying kiss. Amazing how sensual the act of two tongues touching could be. Having Andrew’s tongue in her mouth made her nipples sensitive, made her pussy start to clench in rhythm with the thrust of his tongue, made her want to throw him back on the bed and consume him right there, body and soul.

She pushed against his chest, wanting to push him back against the pillows. “Wait,” he said. He slowly slid the scarf — Oh, hey there! Gemma’s scarf! Nice scarf, goodbye scarf — off her neck and then said, “Stand up. I want to see you. I want to see all of you.”

She slowly moved off the bed to stand in front of him, stand between his legs. She leaned forward and kissed him as he reached around her neck to find the start of the dress’s zipper. As his fingers slid down her back, she shimmied her way out of the dress. His hands pushed the blue fabric down, and as it slipped off of her body and puddled onto her feet he was looking at her body. He ran his thumbs down the sides of her torso and she shivered with anticipation at the pressure.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he said.

He unhooked her bra and slid it down her arms, dropping it on the floor behind her. One of his hands covered one of her breast, perfectly covering the entire thing, and then his fingertips encircled the pebbled nipple. She gasped at how intense that sensation was, and he pulled her body toward him. He started licking the other nipple, his tongue moving back and forth over the sensitive flesh, and then he sucked on it. She cried with how incredibly raw that felt. From the way her body was reacting, Andrew was going to make her come just from playing with her breasts.

She pushed him back onto the bed and fumbled with his belt. She used to practice this maneuver! And now it was like she had no idea how belts operated. She unhooked the belt and she began working on the buttons of his trousers. His erection throbbed against the pull of the fabric, and when she put her hand over it he closed his eyes.

His hips were so slim, the only obstacle to getting his trousers off was his erection. He lifted his hips and she hooked her fingers around the waistbands of his boxers and trousers, pulling both down with one move, lifting one foot and then the other to completely remove him from them. And then, still between his legs, she knelt down and took him in her mouth, swirling her tongue over the head, licking the saltiness there, sucking the delicate flesh in short bursts. She had once taught bored housewives classes in how to do this in a way guaranteed to drive their man wild (so he would buy them things), and right now all she wanted to do was show him how much he meant to her.

“Oh God, I’m not going to last.” He sat up on the bed and reached forward to lift her to her feet. He gave her another intoxicating kiss and then pulled her onto him, their hips meeting, his hands moving through her hair. Then he rolled over on her and the wings of his shirt flapped over them.

“Off,” she said, pushing the sides of the shirt off his shoulders.

The shirt slid off his back and onto the floor.

Andrew raised himself up on his arms and moved his body over Bridget’s, looking down at her.

“Bridget,” he said.

She raised her arms and locked them behind his head. “Andrew,” she said, and a smile spread across her mouth.

“Bridget,” he said, and then he bent his head down to kiss her, holding his body above hers, not moving.

She got it finally: he knew precisely who she was, and what he was doing, and what this meant.

She knew he was, and what she wanted from him. All she wanted was this moment, and she wouldn’t ask for anything else, ever.

“I love you,” she said.

He smiled. Just a mouth smile first, and then he closed his eyes. “I love you, Bridget Kelly.”

He bent his head down to the hollow of her neck as he swung his body into the center of hers. His cock moved to her entrance, and she lifted her hips for him. He pushed slowly at first, and then she grabbed the back of his head, pulling him down to her, demanding he move. He pushed slowly at first, and then his hips started rocking faster and faster, pushing him further and further inside of her.

“Oh God,” he whispered, and he lifted his head from her. His eyes were closed.

She dug her fingernails into him, not trying to cause pain, but simply wanting to hold on while he moved. He dropped his head by her neck and started sucking on the soft flesh there while he fucked her, hard and rhythmically, then slow and softly, and then banging her like the walls of the universe were going to give in.

Bridget felt the slow build up of climax beginning within her, and she didn’t even care — she wanted to be there for him, with him, and not for herself.  
When the climax started washing over him, she felt like the most powerful person in the universe: joining in this moment with this man was the best decision she’d ever made, and she was absolutely okay with whatever happened after this moment.

When his orgasm subsided, he fell against her. Had other men done that? She didn’t even care. This was different. She ran her finger through his thick, glossy hair, and she kissed the side of his face.

He rolled off of her and reached for the box of tissues. “Well, that was fun,” he said.

She giggled. “Yeah. The East German judge gives that an eight.”

“An eight? Are you sure? I think their judging scale only went from one to six.”

“Oh,” said Bridget. “In that case, I’m pretty sure it was an eight. You definitely nailed the dismount.”

He laughed into the small of her neck. “Just wait until I get some practice.”

“Floor work or pommel horse?”

Andrew raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. He didn’t even have a response, instead just looking directly at her. “Whatever you want,” he said.

She caressed his cheek. “That works for me,” she said.


	25. Bridget and Siobhan

Every morning, the sun streamed in through the windows and hit Bridget square in the face. No matter which side of the bed she was on, she always managed to get the sun right in her eyes, and since the days were getting longer now the sun’s wake-up call was arriving earlier and earlier every day. Somehow she’d managed to survive three months of the sun waking her up. It had taken three months for her to feel comfortable enough to think that maybe she could make this one small change.

“Can we get blinds for that window?” she asked.

Andrew’s only response was a snuffle into his pillow. The sun didn’t bother him in the slightest, of course, because Andrew could sleep through anything.

“Why, yes, sweetie bear,” Bridget continued in a deeper voice, “you can buy blinds. Buy any kind of window treatment you want.

“But Andrew,” she said, in a mock-high-pitched voice, “I don’t want to make any decisions without you.

She made a grumpy face. “It’s okay, honey, really, I’m a guy, so I don’t care what it looks like.”

Bridget looked over to see Andrew peering up at her from his pillow, eyes half closed. “That’s not true, I care very deeply what this place looks like.” He put his hand on her arm. “It looks beautiful from where I’m sitting. And yes, you can buy any sort of blinds you want.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “Good morning.”

He put his arm around her and pulled her down to where he lay. He nuzzled her hair in a sleepy way. “It is now.”

Three months she’d woken up every morning with Andrew, and it still seemed crazy or impossible. She didn’t want to make any assumptions, or start making any plans. But still: three months.

Three months was ninety days, she realized. Was there a ninety-day relationship pin?

She was still going to meetings every day, although she’d noticed her underlying desire for a hit had almost vanished overnight. One of the group leaders suggested that maybe she’d transferred her addiction to her relationship, which wasn’t uncommon. Bridget was almost completely certain that wasn’t what was going on here — she loved Andrew, but whenever he wasn’t around she felt okay, like everything was going to be fine. In the depths of her dependence on pills she had never once felt okay when those pills weren’t nearby. But just in case, she kept going to meetings.

She’d even started working with some of the newer members. Not acting as a sponsor, because she wasn’t ready for that yet. But she could see doing that, in the future.

The future.

Hey, those two words didn’t scare her. It was going to be a good day.

Andrew had just started massaging the sensitive skin on the side of her abdomen that always made her shiver when the phone rang. Bridget looked over at it.

“Ignore it,” he said into her ear.

The phone read GEMMA.

There had to be a good reason Gemma was calling them at seven-twenty in the morning. And Bridget was never not going to be there for her friend.

She picked up the phone. “Hey, what’s up?” she said, as though Andrew’s hand hadn’t shifted to the soft flesh between her thighs and begun lightly moving back and forth.

“Siobhan’s in labor,” Gemma said.

Bridget was guessing Andrew had heard what Gemma said, because his hand stopped moving.

§

Henry was in the waiting room in the maternity ward. Another man, with close-cropped hair and slightly ill-fitting clothes sat nearby. He was Henry’s minder, Bridget thought. A plainclothes cop sat nearby, maybe keeping Henry under surveillance while he waited for Siobhan or maybe he was Siobhan’s keeper when she wasn’t in labor. Bridget had definitely seen him before though.

“She won’t let me in there,” Henry said.

Bridget sat down across from him. He looked so handsome and so sad. Had this man actually tried to help Siobhan murder her? Gemma had told her that Henry had taken a plea agreement from the Feds: testify against Siobhan, explain all of her crazy schemes, and plead guilty to conspiracy, and in return he’d get probation and serve no time, although he’d have a criminal record.

“I had to explain to him that was a better deal than he was going to get if he took his chances and had a trial,” Gemma had said. “Has he not _seen_ prison movies? I sent him the first two seasons of _Oz_ on disc and said, ‘Watch these and take notes, you moron’.”

“Why are you here?” Bridget asked Henry.

The corners of his mouth went up, but it didn’t look like a smile, not exactly. “I really love her.”

It’s why he did everything he did, of course. Love was a crazy emotion. The time to re-evaluate was when it made you do crazy things.

“One day she might realize that’s important to her,” Bridget said.

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t actually think she can love me back. I don’t think she can love anyone.”

“I think she doesn’t love herself,” Bridget said. God knew she’d met enough of those people in the NA meetings. People searching for some kind of love and validation from every source, other than the one they needed it the most from.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“I want to apologize,” Henry said.

“Henry —” Bridget said.

“No, I know. This is off the record and I’ve had to make all those statements to the lawyers and whoever. But I really am sincerely sorry for everything I did.” Henry swung his hand through the air, palm out, indicating he was done. “That’s it. You don’t have to say anything. I don’t want anything in return. I just wanted to make sure I said that.”

Bridget nodded. Andrew had warned her about discussing the case at all with Henry. And given the sensitive nature of what had happened, that seemed like a pretty good idea.

She still couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit sorry for him. Dreadful things had happened to her, but in her mind she was free. Henry was never going to be free, no matter what.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“My sister’s having a baby,” she said. “Of course I want to be here.”

Bridget stood up. “I’m going to get some tea from the cafeteria.”

She stopped at the nurses’s station, where Nurse Gabby was entering in some information into the terminal there. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” Nurse Gabby did a double-take and said, “Oh, you must be identical twins with the one in there, huh?”

“How’s she doing?”

“The process takes as long as it takes.”

“Can’t say anything, huh?”

“Sweetheart, you wouldn’t believe how some people react to what the nurse says. We have to tell them to turn off their video cameras before we’ll even admit they have a baby, because people will sue over anything.”

“It’s just…she’s been in labor a long time.”

“My first took eighteen hours. The second one about twenty minutes. Come to think of it, that sums up their personalities.” Nurse Gabby laughed at her own joke. “How about you? You have kids?”

Bridget shook her head. A lifetime of bad choices had curtailed some possibilities for her. “I can’t… I can’t have kids.”

“Oh.” Gabby gave her a sympathetic smile. “It can be hard.”

Bridget smiled in return. “My life’s pretty good. I have no complaints.”

“That’s a good attitude.”

“One day at a time.”

When she came back from the cafeteria, Nurse Gabby waved her over to the desk. “Would you like to see your new nephew?”

“It’s a boy?” Bridget asked. “Siobhan had a boy.”

She followed the nurse down the hall to the window facing the area where the obstetrics nurse held a small blue bundle with one hand and an eyedropper with the other. Next to her was a man in a suit, watching her every move. After dabbing the bundle with a tissue, the nurse carefully laid it on a scale, and then picked it up. She shooed the man in the suit out of her way as she moved.

“He’s so small,” Bridget said.

“Be thankful when they’re small. Each of mine was over nine pounds. Let me tell you, that was some pain.”

“Can I see her? My sister?”

Nurse Gabby shook her head.

Now the obstetrics nurse was bent over the blue bundle, shaking her head and cooing as she poked in with a little stick.

“What’s she doing?” Bridget asked.

“Getting cheek cells.” Nurse Gabby blushed, perhaps realizing she’d said too much. “It’s for a kind of test.”  
The DNA test. Of course. Andrew had given his blood sample to the firm doing the testing already. She assumed Henry had too.

The obstetrics nurse sealed the stick into a glass vial, closed it with a white label, and then handed it to the man in the suit. Then she repeated the procedure twice more, sealing each vial with a white label. Only then did the man in the suit leave the room.

“How long does it take to get the results?” Bridget asked.

“I’m not the person to talk about that, sorry.”

“Could you ask again if I could see her?”

Nurse Gabby smiled. “Sure.”

Bridget returned to the waiting room. “She had the baby,” she told Henry. “It’s a boy.”

“No,” he whined. “Not another boy. I already have two boys.” His hand slammed against the back of his chair and he sulked.

Bridget stared at him and not for the first time wondered what Siobhan, who married someone as completely and totally amazing as Andrew, had seen in this man, enough to have an affair, commit crimes, abandon her home, and attempt murder.

She tried to find the words to say something, anything, even though she knew Henry’s filter wouldn’t allow him to hear her in the first place.

The plainclothes policeman managed to get Bridget’s attention by shaking his head behind Henry.

She clutched the straps of her purse and turned to go. There was no point to her being here.

“Ms. Kelly?”

Bridget turned to see the man who’d been in the obstetrics ward with the nurse who’d done tests on Siobhan’s baby.

“That’s me.”

“Your sister would like to see you. You can have fifteen minutes.”

A wave of dizziness passed over Bridget and she wondered if she might be ill. Even though Bridget had been asking to see Siobhan, somehow it had been easier when she’d been asking and mostly sure that it wasn’t going to happen. Now that she had permission, that it could actually happen, she wasn’t at all sure.

Henry leapt to his feet. “What about me?” he demanded. “I need to see her. I should talk to her first.”

“Do you want to see her?” the man said to Bridget, as though Henry hadn’t spoken.

“Yes,” Bridget said. “Yes, I do.”

The man turned out to be Troy Layton, and he was one of Siobhan’s lawyers. He would be present for their meeting, although he’d be on the other side of the room and not an active participant. He told Bridget not to bring up any circumstances with the case.

 _Our entire lives are this case_ , Bridget thought. She couldn’t think of one thing they could discuss that wasn’t tangentially related to what had happened.

He led her down the corridor to room 535. When Bridget walked in, all she could see was the blue curtain that had been drawn across to shade the occupant from the passersby in the hallway.

She walked in, slowly, telling herself that there wasn’t anything Siobhan could do to her now. That she was doing this for herself.

She would have stopped at the edge of the curtain but she told herself, _Now now now do it now_. And she turned the corner.

There was Siobhan, lying in the hospital bed. She looked exhausted, pale and sweaty, her blonde hair up in a ponytail and flat out on the pillow behind her head. She was wearing one of those terrible hospital gowns and she wasn’t wearing makeup.

She still looked fierce and marvelous and shrewder than everyone around her.

Siobhan’s gaze moved from the TV, where some ridiculous soap opera was playing, to Bridget’s face.

The two sisters stared at one another for a few moments.

“And here I thought I’d be the one who looked like hell,” Siobhan said.

Bridget almost smiled. She’d made a mistake. Andrew had told her not to come, not to ask to see Siobhan, not to put herself through it. Well, she’d signed up for this. Best to soldier on through. And plan on going to a meeting directly afterward.

“Hi Bonnie,” Bridget said.

“What do you want?”

“I wanted to see my sister again.”

Siobhan’s head shook slightly, as though she were trying to figure out what Bridget had just said. “Why?”

Bridget walked around and sat in the chair nearest the bed. The lawyer hovered nearby, perhaps fearful Bridget was going to try something. “Why did you tell him I could come in here?”

Siobhan snorted. “Touché.” She operated the bed controls to move into a more seated position. Of course, that put her as a superior position to Bridget, the better to look down at her.

“So how are you feeling?” Bridget asked.

“I just pushed a human being out of my vagina, how do you think I feel? God, women do that more than once?”

“What are you going to name him?”

A look passed over Siobhan’s face, like she was about to say something mean and horrible, but then she just shook her head and flopped her head backward. “His father can name him, I don’t give a damn.”

Before she could think twice about it, Bridget reached out and covered her sister’s hand with her own. Siobhan looked at her, startled, and the lawyer even took a step forward. Bridget squeezed Siobhan’s hand. Siobhan didn’t respond. After a moment, the lawyer stepped back into his corner.

“What do you give a damn about, Siobhan? Is there anything you care about?”

Siobhan’s lips pressed together, going white, and then she yanked her hand away from Bridget’s. “So you’re here to gloat, is that it?”

“What? No.”

“You’ve done so well for yourself, haven’t you. You’re sleeping in my house, with my husband, in my bed.”

Bridget sat back in her chair. “Ask yourself why you’re not there.”

“Speaking of my husband, how is the romantic and drippy Andrew Martin?”

The lawyer objected. Bridget ignored him. “He’s actually doing pretty well. All things considered. It’s been a tough year for him. But he’s going to get through it just fine.”

Siobhan wiped the corner of her eye. Was it a real tear? Bridget couldn’t tell. “How is dear, sweet Gemma?”

“She’s dating an aide to Senator Ozawa. Incredibly smart guy. Went to Princeton and Harvard. He laughs a lot and he loves Gemma’s jokes. He and Gemma have the same sense of humor.”

Siobhan stared at Bridget, tears running more actively from the corners of her eyes. “And how are you doing?”

Bridget wondered how to answer that. She could concentrate on how her twin sister had betrayed her. How it had felt to wake up in a psych ward, addicted to the very drugs she’d worked so hard to get out of her system. How hard it was to go through detox, again. Or what it felt like to have lost everything and wonder where she could go from there.

She decided to go with brutal honesty. “You know, my life is amazing right now,” she said. “I have some really good friends and for the first time in my life I feel really content. It’s crazy to talk about feeling grounded in a place like Manhattan, but I do.”

“So what, you’re here to gloat about how wonderfully everything’s worked out for you?”

The lawyer moved into Bridget’s field of vision, tapping his very expensive wristwatch. _Time’s up._

“No, I came here to see my sister because she’d just had a baby. We probably won’t have an opportunity to speak again for a very long time.” She covered Siobhan’s hand again. “Please take care of yourself. You know, every day find one thing you could be happy about.”

“I have nothing to be happy about!” Siobhan screamed. “Don’t you get it? My life is completely destroyed and _it’s all your fault_ , you stupid whore!”

Bridget got up and slung the strap for her purse over her shoulder. A million responses occurred to her, all of which were nasty and cutting and served no purpose other than to get the last, vicious word in. Siobhan wasn’t listening, she was just once again looking for someone to take the blame. Had it always been that way? Probably. “Take care, Bonnie,” she said. “Try to take care of yourself.”

She let herself out without a backward glance.


	26. The family

When Bridget came home from the hospital she sat on the sofa, and she cried.

Any connection she had to her old life, to who she had been, to who other people had been to her — they were all gone.

She should not have gone to see Siobhan. She knew she would have regretted if she hadn’t, but now that she knew what it was going to be like, she felt sick.

It had been looking into a funhouse mirror. At least, the kind of funhouse mirror they had on those horror shows on the CW.

Andrew came home and immediately joined her on the sofa. He put his arms around her, and his breath tickled her forehead. He held her as she cried, and he did not say, “I told you so.”

“I just keep wondering if there was something I could have —”

“There isn’t,” he said. “None of us could have.”

Bridget kept rubbing her hand on Andrew’s chest, reassuring herself he was there. “When we were in high school, I did the worst thing to her. I stole her boyfriend. She really liked him and I took him away from her.”

“Bridget. That isn’t —”

“I did a lot of terrible things to her like that.”

Andrew tilted Bridget’s face toward him. “Stop it. Stop doing this to yourself. If we should be punished for the things we did to our siblings when we were younger, not a one of us would be left alive. Please. You didn’t make Siobhan into the person she is today.”

The silence lasted a long time.

“Where do we go from here?” Bridget asked.

“My divorce is final in two weeks.”

Bridget patted his chest and then rested her cheek against him. “Good.”

Andrew rubbed the back of her scalp with his fingertips. “I’m not making idle conversation, Bridget.”

She leaned back and looked up at him. “I know. It’s just…awkward, sometimes.”

“What is?”

“This. You’re divorcing someone who looks exactly like me to come home to…me.”

“If I had ever known that Siobhan had a twin sister, I would not have spent one minute confused about who I was with at any time. The two of you are like…night and day isn’t even strong enough.” He sat there a moment, staring through the window at the Manhattan skyline. “The two of you are like the destruction of everything I’ve ever held dear and the blossoming of a thousand possibilities, and if you don’t know which one you are, lady, I’m going to be very, very cross.”

The look on his face was so impish and yet so vulnerable at the same time. She leaned forward and kissed him, marveling again that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. “I love you, Andrew,” she said.

He shifted against her so roughly for a second she wondered if he was turned on and wanted to make love right then. But then she saw he was reaching into the pocket of his suit jacket, draped over the back of the sofa.  
“I was going to wait until dinner tonight for this,” he said.

His hand pulled out a small velvet covered box stamped Harry Winston.

“But now seems good,” he added. “Bridget Marie Kelly, will you marry me? Once I’m finally single, that is.”

Every single objection and dismissal and deflection that came to Bridget’s mind — and there were a lot of them — ran into the sound of Gemma’s voice saying, _Whenever you find yourself saying,_ I can’t _, just start saying_ I can _. And damn if that doesn’t change everything._

“Yes,” Bridget said.

When their kiss ended, Andrew said, “Fair warning. I’m a two-time loser in the marriage department.”

“That’s okay. This is my first real relationship and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Andrew shrugged. “We’ll muddle through this somehow.” He pushed her back onto the couch and started kissing his way down the line of her neck. “Ah. I have another question for you.”

“Trust me, the answer is yes,” she said.

“How do you feel about living in San Francisco?”

Bridget’s head popped up. “What?”

“This morning the broker called me. We have a buyer for the co-op. I’ve been discussing what to do with the firm with Olivia. She would stay here, and I’d like to open a West Coast office to deal with the Asia Pacific region. I can do investment banking from anywhere.” He stroked the inside of her thigh. “And frankly, I’d like us to have a fresh start in a place where you won’t continuously hear people calling you Siobhan.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Would you prefer Los Angeles? It’s not my favorite, but —”

“No. San Francisco’s totally great.”

Andrew smiled.

§

The call came on Thursday morning.

Andrew was in his office, yelling at someone named Tucker — first or last name, Bridget wasn’t sure — and Juliet was in the kitchen, babbling about where she’d like them to hold the marriage ceremony. Bridget didn’t think Tibet or Mount Denali sounded practical, but she was up for either Fiji or even Kauai.

Juliet was _all over_ this marriage. “I am so happy you and Daddy are together,” she said. “Honestly. I mean, I know that sounds wacky, but I have so many friends whose parents are just freaks, you know? I mean, they hate one another.” She took another spoonful of yogurt before adding: “It’s kind of sick how you two go at it like bonobo monkeys, but I’ll take that over hating one another, you know? And…”

Bridget covered her mouth, blushing. “Yeah?”

“You’re so much nicer than Siobhan was. I can’t even believe you two are related.”

Bridget poured herself another cup of coffee and giggled to herself. “Bonobo monkeys,” she repeated.

The phone rang and Juliet picked it up. “Yellow!” she sang. Then her smile disappeared and she was instantly serious. “Yes, this is… Just a second.” She held the phone out to Bridget. “It’s the lab.”

Bridget took the handset from her. “Hello?” She snapped her fingers in front of Juliet’s face and then pointed toward Andrew’s office. Juliet took off on a run.

A nasally voice said, “This is Robertson Laboratories. I need to talk to Andrew Martin or Bridget Kelly.”

“This is Bridget Kelly.”

“Hi, this is in regards to the DNA testing on Siobhan —”

Andrew walked into the kitchen with Juliet.

“Yes, I know,” Bridget said. “Just a second, I need to put you on speaker.”

Her fingers fumbled on the docking station. Juliet reached out and pushed the Speaker button.

“Okay, this is just to let you know that we’ve done the tests with a couple of confirmation tests, so the margin for error is less than two-tenths of one percent.”

Andrew started wheeling his hand in the air. _Get on with it_.

“The baby’s father is Andrew Martin,” said the lab guy.

The lab representative said some other stuff after that, but for all Bridget cared the phone call was over. She felt a huge weight drop down in her gut, and she closed her eyes. When Andrew’s hand covered hers and he pulled her back toward him. She sank against his chest and just stood there for a moment.

Andrew had a son.

He had a baby with Siobhan.

Until that moment, Bridget hadn’t really known how she was going to feel. Even having seen Siobhan in the hospital, Bridget hadn’t really understood that there was another human being involved. Because everyone was so sure it was Henry? Because she didn’t want to believe Andrew had ever been with Siobhan?

This changed everything. The baby had to take priority in Andrew’s life. It wasn’t the baby’s fault it had been born into such a fucked-up, stupid relationship like Andrew and Siobhan’s.

When Bridget opened her eyes, Juliet was sitting there looking exceptionally pleased. “So I have a little brother, huh?”

“Juliet,” Andrew said. “Don’t do this. Not now.”

The phone rang again moments later. Juliet picked it up again. “Hey, Gemma,” she said. She raised her eyebrows at her father and waggled the phone. Andrew shook his head. “Yeah, we heard. It’s pretty crazy, right? Well, I think they’re kinda processing it right now, so I’ll tell them to call when it’s processed.” She hung up. “She’s crying.”

Andrew kissed the top of Bridget’s head. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything,” she said. And then she started crying.

“Well, think of it this way,” Juliet said. “He’s kind of like your kid. Shares half your genes, right?”

Juliet’s enthusiastic naïveté made Bridget smile, even through the tears that were slipping down her cheeks.

Andrew’s thumb wiped the teardrops off of Bridget’s skin. “Bridget. It’s okay. We are going to find a way to make this work, okay?” He smiled. “And you know, the big kid over here is actually right.”

Bridget stared into Andrew’s eyes, and she had to decide: Was she going to go through with this? She knew less about mothering than she did about relationships or marriage.

That wasn’t the baby’s fault, though.

“I guess this is the only baby we’re going to have together, huh?” she said.

“We can have lots. This will be the only one that shares our genes, however. Making him both of ours is just a little more paperwork.”

Bridget reached up and pulled Andrew’s head down to her, giving him the biggest, most trusting kiss she could.

“It’s not paperwork, it’s a baby,” she said. “Now let’s go get your son.”

§

“Daddy, you need to give the kid a normal name,” Juliet said.

Andrew rechecked the paperwork he was filling out. “Hugh is a perfectly normal name.”

“Can I give you some of the nicknames he’s going to get on the playground? ‘Huge’ is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Hugh worked perfectly fine for your grandfather.”

Juliet folded her arms. “I guess it’s better than Dakota or Jayden.”

Bridget had baby Hugh in her arms, rocking him back and forth. “I had an uncle Hugh. He was my favorite relative. I like the name a lot.”

Andrew pointed the pen at Bridget and nodded. “See?”

“Do they just sleep all the time?” Bridget asked.

“Wait until he stops sleeping and starts yelling,” Andrew said. “Then you’ll see.”

“You’ll need to get a nanny,” Juliet said. “I’m not babysitting. Well, not until he’s three or four and I can tell him scary stories and keep him up all night feeding him chocolate.”

Bridget kissed the top of Hugh’s head, where he still had the “angel’s kiss” mark. “Don’t listen to her, Hugh.”

Andrew sat down next to Bridget and took the baby from her. “They look so innocent, and then they grow up to be teenagers.”

“Are we taking on too much?” Bridget asked. “The baby. Moving to San Francisco. Your divorce.”

Andrew shook his head. “The only way to find out is to go ahead and do it. Do you want to slow anything down?”

Bridget looked into Andrew’s eyes. Yes, everything could go crazy-stupid-wrong. God knew it had in her life, both from her own stupid mistakes and from enough maliciousness from other people. _Past performance no guarantee of future results_ , as the advertisement said. But that was true any time, anywhere, for anyone. And there was no way she was giving up what she had now. This family, this life, this man.

“Never,” she said, and she rested her forehead against his. “I love you, Andrew Martin.”

“I love you, Bridget Kelly.”

Juliet pumped her fists in the air. “Fiji it is!” she yelled.


End file.
